The first card I made
A while back, as I was beginning to learn more about mixed media art, I began watching Youtube videos (have you done that too?... there's a wealth of art instruction over there!)... and I stumbled upon a series of videos by mixed media artist Stacy Spangler. Stacy is a Christian artist like me, and one of the things she's done over the years is create art cards with her favorite Bible verses on them. Well, I loved that idea and decided to try my hand at creating scripture cards in my own style.
I decided to use the 9x12 inch 100lb Strathmore Bristol paper that I had on hand for my card backgrounds, since it's nice and sturdy. Then I took an old gift card and "scraped" two or three coordinating colors of acrylic paint over the entire 9x12 sheet. Scraped paint dries very quickly, so once it was dry, I cut the larger sheet into A2 sized cards (4.25"x5.5"). You could cut your cards any size that you like!... I just wanted mine to be on the bigger side! Each individual card then had a different design, but they all coordinated with each other since they shared the same colors.
At that time, I was also experimenting with some intuitive painting... so I added another layer of dots, dashes, squiggly lines and other marks with acrylic paint on top of my cards. (More is better, right?). I loved the way this looked!... Doing this made each card completely unique.
Next, I took each card to my sewing machine and did a zig-zag stitch around the border of each card. I like using white thread, since it blends into the background, but you could use a colorful or contrasting thread if you like that look better.
In her videos, Stacy writes out the words of her scripture verse on cardstock and then cuts them out individually... but that felt a little bit too "fiddly" to me. So I printed the words of my verse in a random "block" with my micron pen and cut around them, adding a border with pen to make them stand out more. You could definitely type or stamp out your words, but I like using my own imperfect hand lettering instead.
Finally, I hand painted embellishments for each card (mine mostly have a nature theme), cut them out, and used my handy UHU glue stick to adhere them. On the first card above, I also added a button from my stash and adhered it with Elmer's Glue. I decided to add a colorful tab with the scripture verse at the top of each card using a little tab I cut from my hand painted paper. On the first card, I added a few stitches with embroidery thread to the tab, and on the second card, I cut a small piece of painted paper for decoration.
I really had fun making these mixed media cards and look forward to making many more! Thanks for the great idea Stacy!!
If using a Bible verse is just not your cup of tea, you could totally create cards like this using favorite quotes or inspiring words... whatever your heart desires! I hope you'll try to make some mixed media cards of your own!
Happy Creating!!
You can find Stacy Spangler's Youtube videos with her instructions about how to make these mixed media cards here:
** Just a little tip!... I found that my painted cards tended to warp as they dried, but placing them overnight under some heavy books really helped to flatten them out!
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