How to Create a Birthday Day Card with Cute Mermaid Clipart – Tutorial

Hi, Kris here. Welcome to another Creating with Clipart. Today, I’m gonna show you my new clip-art pack of mermaids, tropical flowers, and all things under the sea. And more importantly, I’ll show you how to use all these elements to make a birthday card using a watercolor mockup.

So I’m gonna dive into Photoshop, and this is the mockup I’m gonna be showing you. It’s part of my watercolor mockup creator. All these products I’m gonna put in the description below, so you can have a look and see what those are all about. So this is just… Once you get rid of these instructions here, you can see that it is a watercolor paper mockup, and I think that’ll work out perfectly for our card today. So once you download the mermaids, you’ll have a zip file, and you’ll open it up, and all of these things will be inside. So there’s Arrangements, Flowers and Leaves, Mermaids, Pelicans, Rocks, Sea Creatures, Sea Foliage, Seashells, Splashes and Bubbles.

So today we’re going to use… Let see, I’m gonna go in… Let’s find our main mermaid first. You can see there are 10 of them, and all of them have different colors as well. Here, let’s see. Different colors of skin tone, hair color, and… Well, I guess it’s not their outfit, but their scales.  So that’s how they look. So let’s just go and find the one we’re gonna use today. I’m gonna use mermaid number six, and I’m going to use this one here, mermaid six, and she’s gonna have the red hair or the orangey red hair and the yellow scales.

Actually, first, I’m gonna show you how to use this. This mockup, you have textures, so you can turn that on and off. You have some extra scratches and whatnot, you can just change the textures of this a little bit. But it’s actually really simple to use. All you do is go here, it says, “Add your artwork here.” You wanna just click inside the box here, so you just click on that, double-click, and it opens up, and it looks fairly similar to before, but you just have this transparent background. So this is just where you’ll add all your artwork, and then it will appear on here once we save it. So, I’m going to go and just add a new layer by hitting the plus sign here, and I’m gonna fill it in with a color, and I already have my swatches ready, so I’m just gonna use this purple and fill it in. And then I’m gonna actually lock this layer, just so I don’t move it around. And then I’m gonna go and grab my mermaid and drag her in, and just size her down a little bit.

Okay. So that’s pretty simple to start with. I’m just gonna put her over here. And then I’m gonna click below on that layer, ’cause I’m gonna put all the elements below. So let’s go and create a scene with her. So I’m gonna go back to… I’m gonna get the… We can let her sit on a rock, because it looks like she’s sitting. There’s three of them here, I’m gonna grab this one, rock three. Just drag it in. And I’m gonna just use these little handles, I’m gonna size it down and drag it down just to line up with her hands and her thumb here. Here we go. I’m gonna just use my arrows just to move that up a little bit more. Actually, let’s make this a little bit bigger, just to fill up the space a little bit more. It’s all about just moving things around and just getting them exactly where you want them. Okay. So that’s pretty good. And then we can go and decorate our rock a little bit, we can go get some sea creatures. How about we go and find some starfish? So I’m gonna grab this guy here, and we can put him on the rock. Just scale him down. Maybe we can put him about here. Let’s add a little pop color there, and that’s great.

Alright. And why don’t we put in some text, just so we know it’s a birthday card. I’m gonna just click the white, and my text tool. I’m gonna go to my character’s palette, and I really like this Little Bee font. I use it quite a bit. You can find that… I’ll put a link in the description below too, I just found it off of Creative Market. And you can just go and select… Try to make this a little bit smaller, so we can see it. Alright, maybe about 24, let’s see. Let’s see how that goes over that, so… Happy birthday.  Okay, I think we’re gonna need that bigger, for sure, so… Just gonna do Command+T, Control+T on a PC, and I’m just gonna drag that out, and that’ll make the last transform. Alright. Maybe just about there. Okay, so far so good. Alright, let’s go on and find some more characters to play with. So I’m gonna go and click on my starfish layer, just so that when I bring everything in, it’s gonna be below that. I love this little pelican here, so let’s go grab him. Drag him in, pelican number two, and size him down, drag him over. And while I still have him in transforming, that’s fine, you can leave it like that, you can just go to Edit, Transform. Oops! Let’s get it up there. And Flip Horizontal. And there we go.

Okay, let’s see where we can place him. Oops! Just gonna lock that Happy Birthday, ’cause I’m having trouble grabbing this guy. He might fit in there. And that might work. Let’s put him over top of the Happy Birthday, so that he fills that in. We’ll leave him there for now, I think that might work. Okay. So I’m gonna go back to the starfish, and I’m gonna go and do a little bit of… Actually, I’m gonna do some background. And go to Splash and Bubbles, I’m gonna grab these white bubbles, well, bubbles two, and drag it in, and resize. And this is just gonna make this look a little bit more frothy down here. I mean, they really work for underwater, but I think I like the look of it here too. Something like that.

And then I’m gonna click on layer one, and I’m gonna bring in a wash here. These are great for backgrounds. You can use these on their own with just a white background, it works really nicely. Or you can put this on a color, and actually, I’m gonna change the blending mode, I’m gonna change it to maybe… Well, the soft white looks nice. Yeah, we’ll leave it on the soft white, I’m so sorry, soft light, and just bring the opacity maybe at about 80% just to get a little texture. Okay. So I think we definitely need some more stuff in here, so I’m going to bring in some flowers. Let’s go back to our flowers. And I can already go in, and there… Let me just clean these up, these are a bunch of pre-made arrangements, but I’m gonna show you actually how I go about making these. So I’m gonna go into the Flowers and Leaves, it’s ’cause you can use them all individually and create your own arrangements. I’ll just make it like that. So I’m gonna do that. Well, let’s pick this guy, and I’m gonna get an orchid, and this one, and this one. Okay, I think those are gonna be our flowers for this one. And I’m just gonna hit Enter as they come in, so I’m gonna scale them all at once.

So I’m gonna select these, and I’m actually gonna go Command+G to group them, let’s say, Flowers, just to keep them all together. And I’m also gonna lock this wash, just so I don’t accidentally move it around. So I’m gonna select all these flowers, Command or Control+T, and scale them down all at once. Bring them up here, and let’s start and Enter, and then I’ll start arranging them. So I know I’m gonna want this orchid down below. What I normally do when I’m arranging flowers, I look for a flower that’s like this, more circular and straight on, or a down view, and then these ones are always going to be below it because you want this one to cover the stems. So that one is gonna usually be at the top layers, so I’m gonna drag flower eight to the top, and that’s gonna be here in the corner. I think of it as my anchor flower, if that makes sense. And then I’m gonna select this guy, I’m gonna do Command or Control+T, just spin him around, shrink him down a touch and tuck him in there a bit. Actually, you know what, I’m gonna do the white flower first. Stick him there. Bring this guy, Command or Control+T, turn it, and then see how he tucks in there, that’s nice. So that kind of works. It looks more natural.

So I’m gonna rearrange this layer order, so this flower 13 is gonna come below, and it’ll tuck in there, so that’s better. These orchids I’m gonna go Edit, Transform, Flip Horizontal, so that goes that way, that leans in there nicer. Makes more sense. Maybe just a little bit bigger. And tuck ’em in there. Okay. I feel like I need one more. I’m gonna grab this one, flower 18, and just scale this guy down. And let’s see, maybe a smidge bigger. Let’s rotate… Slide him in there, okay. So clearly we need some greenery, so I’m gonna go do that. So I’m gonna pick the wash layer, and so I bring all these leaves in below. So I’m gonna grab this one here, and this one, so I’m actually just pushing Command or Control to select multiple ones. You’re wondering how I’m doing that. So I’m just holding down my Command while I click, and that will allow me to get a few of these guys. Actually, I’m gonna get this other color here, and maybe this one. Okay, so I’m gonna drag this all in, hit Enter, and I wanna… I’m just gonna bring these into this group, so they’re below it though. And then Command or Control+T to resize, just scale those down, just approximate where we’re gonna need them, hit Enter. Okay. So now I can start… Let’s just put this over here. Let’s start filling these in.

Alright, so Command and T, get that in there, grab this guy, move him around, something like that. Oops. Or the one below. Okay, this one needs to be bigger, for sure. So let’s do that. I think I’m gonna flip this one. I’m going to flip it vertically. Here we go. But I just like the way the leaves are bending a little bit more there. This guy, let’s bring him down, size him up, looks good. Okay, and lastly, we’ll get him in here. Alright.

That looks good. Now I have a gap here that I just wanna fill in with some greenery, so I’m just gonna go and click on one of my leaves, I’m gonna do Command or Control+J to duplicate, Command+T, and just slide that behind. And then maybe I’ll grab this one, Command+J to duplicate, Command+T to move, and pop that in the back there just to fill it in. Okay. So that’s good for that side, now let’s do this side here. So I’m gonna go back to my finder, so I’m gonna grab a few more flowers here, so I’m gonna grab this one and this one, you can hold down Command to select multiple… This, and this, and let’s put this guy in here, too. Okay, so that… We’ll start with that. Kinda put this in this wrong group here, so let’s bring that out. So I’m gonna select those flowers, take them up, I’m gonna put them above the other flowers and then group them into, say, Flowers Two. Okay. So grab those flowers, Command+T, scale them down. Okay.

And then let’s get arranging here. This guy can go over there, this guy… Bit… Alright, move him out of the way. So this guy isn’t gonna go over here, I’m gonna bring in some shells, and so I’m not gonna use this as my anchor flower this time. Gonna move it so it looks like it’s tilting up towards the sun a little bit. Okay. Let me move him, I’m gonna move him up onto the top. Okay. And this one, I’ll just tuck in here. And actually I think I’m gonna bring it back to the very top as well. Okay. Let’s just click on the flowers and bring in… I’m gonna do the shells next. We can come back here to get the leaves in a minute, but I’m gonna go to the shells. I like adding the shells to the floral arrangement’s bedding, it looks kind of nice. Gives it a little bit of a different texture. So I’m gonna grab these three, drag them in, select them all, Command+T, and just bring them over here so I can see them a bit. Okay, I’m gonna bring this guy down here, move that up a little bit. Actually, I’ll bring this shell to be on top. There it goes. Actually, no, one below that white flower, that makes more sense. We’ll just size them up just a touch. Okay.

This guy can tuck in here. And actually, I’m gonna have him overlapping in here. There we go, yeah. And then this shell is gonna come up a bit, so we have that overlapping. That… Okay, I think that’ll be good. We’ll see what it looks like once we get our leaves in, so let’s go get those, back to the… Where am I going, Flowers and Leaves? And I’m gonna get… Gonna get this one, and this one. Gonna get one of these banana leaves. Let’s see how we do with those. I’ll just start to bring them into this folder at the bottom, and size them down, move here, and grab this guy, and he’ll be here. Actually, I want him to be over the water. So where is my rock? My rock is there, so I’m gonna bring the rock below the flowers, so that the roof of this leaf is going over that water part there. And I think what I can make happen is… Yeah, like that. Okay. So, you can see how that looks kind of cool ’cause it flows in, kind of a nice transition. Those happy… Well, I guess it’s not a mistake, but I did not really plan it.  Just kinda works. Okay.

So you just keep moving things around, seeing where they look good, and filling in the holes. Okay. And I think I’m gonna fill in some more greenery here. Let’s just maybe grab this guy, Command+J to duplicate, Command+T, and we’ll just fill in some of this in there. Maybe we’ll grab this one, Command+J, Command+T to fill in that, so it’s just nice and green behind here. Okay. Perfect! So I think that works well. Let’s see, maybe I’m gonna make her and the rock just a little bit bigger, so I’ve selected them both, and just gonna make that a little bit bigger. Okay. Filling up that space. Let’s see if we can make the pelican a little bit bigger, if that’s all right. Okay.

Now, to make it show up on our mockup, if you just go… File, Save, or Command+S. You don’t do Save As, just do Save, and then you go back to your mockup, that’s where it’ll show up. So that’s how easy it is to use these mockups, and that’s how easy it is to create a super cute card using clip-art. It’s even easier if you use the pre-made arrangements, but it’s really fun. I encourage you to make your own, too, ’cause you can make it super personal to you and stylize the way you want it for your project. Well, that’s it for today, so I hope you enjoyed it and found some of these tips useful and it helps you with your projects, and if you did like it, please give it a thumbs-up, subscribe, and don’t forget to hit that bell icon so you can be notified of new tutorials just like this one in the future. I post every week. I’d love to see you back here. Thanks so much for watching. I love you guys, and I’ll see you in the next one.