52-Card Inspiration Deck

Yayyy! I'm part of Jess Brogan's Inspirational Deck Swap this year!

I've heard great things about this swap.

The rules are easy:

1. Create a deck of 52 cards in your own art style following the theme of inspiration

2. Mail your deck to Jess

3. Receive a full set of 52 unique cards from 51 other artists!

Cool, right?

I'm going to show you my process.

First I chose a backing paper and glued all of my cards to it.

This is the adhesive that I used.

 I laid the paper face-down on my surface, sprayed the whole back with a fairly good layer of my adhesive, and placed my cards out in a grid. This layout made it easier to cut out later (thinking ahead!) 

Here you can see the pretty paper that I chose for the backs of the cards.

Once the glue had dried, I covered the faces of the cards with a turquoise acrylic paint.
Again, MUCH easier to do this when they're all in one large sheet.

Once the turquoise had dried, I got out my turquoise metallic Lumiere and sponged on some texture.
Isn't it lovely?

After all of my paint was dry, I decided that my backgrounds were complete, so I cut out the cards.

So pretty!

I love copper and turquoise together, so I edged my cards individually in metallic copper acrylic paint.
I did this with my fingers, dipping my finger into the paint and then rubbing it along the edges of the cards.  

Then I added my collage elements.
Since the swap is based in the US, I wanted to show my Canadian pride by adding Canadian postage stamps to each card.
Then I added the "Inspiration" part of the card (remember, that is the theme of this swap!)
I found 52 inspirational quotes relating to creativity (this last part is my own spin).

On the backs of the cards, I spritzed a light spray of Adirondack Ink in Espresso and added a sticker with my name and blog address so that recipients can find me if they want.

Unfortunately, I spelled my blog address wrong - Realties instead of Realities.
I'll have to see if I can peel them all off and re-print them. (yeeesh!)

 Anyway, what a GREAT experience! The cards took a lot less time that I had thought. I think that planning ahead and doing as much as I could on one sheet helped speed up the process.

You should check out her swap! The decks have to be to her by November 15th, so you have two weeks!