By Bobbi Holmes
Artist trading cards are a unique art form. The artist will create a card, and instead of selling it, he or she will trade the card with another artist - for a card that the other artist created. Of course, some people do sell artist trading cards, but to get into the true spirit of the card, it is about creating and trading.
Things You'll Need:
Playing cards
Glue
Embellishments
Photographs
Paint
Paintbrushes
1
Begin with a deck of cards. A playing card is the
perfect size for a trading card canvas. Recently our puppy chewed up a few
cards from one deck of cards. The rest of that deck may not be suitable for
a card game, but they will be great as an artist trading card canvas.
2
Create a theme for a batch of cards. I love
Ecclesiastes, so I decided to make a few cards featuring some quotes from
that book of the Bible.
3
Pair a favorite photograph with another image. In
college I took a black and white photograph of the race horse, Cougar II.
After converting the image to digital form, I printed it out, along with a
picture of the racetrack where the original picture was taken.
4
Create a border in a graphics program, and add text to your image before applying it to the artist trading card.
5
Make a holiday themed artist trading card, such as this
one where I Photoshop'd in the cats.
6
Pair sayings with images that you affix to the artist
trading card.
7
Display old family photographs as a collage on an artist trading card.
8 Color up old black and white images in Photoshop for the artist trading card.
9
Add embellishments, like ribbons and bangles to the
artist trading card.
10
Combine artist creations and photographic images on the
artist trading card.
11
Use embellishments and cutouts to decorate the artist
trading card, and apply some paint.