It's been well over a year since I last participated in an ATC swap on Craftster; it was one of the first swaps I did there. That time I hand-drew every card with skinny Sharpies and colored pencils; this time, I wanted to steer away from time-consuming drawings, and try paper collage instead.
This is the first one I did. It is for my partner's "water" theme. I had run across a photograph online of a blackbird on the edge of a puddle (or birdbath, it was hard to tell) and I used that as my guide when designing this simple card. It is made of scrapbooking papers and rubber stamps, with a piece of thin plastic over the lower section to replicate the shininess of water. I did just the smallest amount of drawing, by adding the boarder and coloring it in with colored pencils.
I claimed my second partner for her "cooking/recipes" theme, and although it was my intention to use only paper for the design, I realized I couldn't make the card I wanted to make without doing some drawing. This ATC is a collage with a drawing as the focal point. I drew and colored the cook, then cut that out and glued it to the blue striped paper, which I also cut out to give the cook an outline. Then I used a rubber stamp on scrapbook paper to imitate the look of a recipe card for the background.
By combining a small drawing with paper collage, I felt that I had developed a style that really worked for me. I intended to continue in this style for the rest of the swap, but for my very next card, I tried something completely different: fabric! This is the third card I did, for my partner who likes nature; it was "artist's choice". The blue background and the square with the poem are paper, while the tree and ground are fabric. I decided on fabric when I realized that my stock of scrapbook paper is limited, but my supply of various fabrics is almost endless! I easily found scraps in the colors I wanted to use.
Since I take my time to do a good job on each card, I like to present them nicely. I made these small folders out of heavy scrapbook paper and little price tags. I affixed the cards to the folder with a single roll of tape on the back--just enough to keep them in place, but easy to remove later.
This swap runs all month, and I can make as many claims as I want (as long as I don't have more than 10 in transit to their recipients at a time)--and I'm having so much fun with these that I will definitely do a couple more "show and tell" posts about them in the coming weeks!
1 comment:
Your post is great to read. I was wondering what are 5 easy steps on how to create an artist trading card?
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