Whenever I get the chance and there’s enough time, I always try to make cards for people’s birthdays. For me, making one is a little more personal than a standard Hallmark card and it also gives me an excuse to practice drawing. On Sunday it was my Nan’s birthday and I wanted to make a card that tested my skills a bit more.

In the past, I’ve based the cards around numbers (people’s age) or based them on the occasion (e.g. heart for an anniversary with the boyfriend). Since I didn’t want to put my Nan’s age on the  front, I decided to go with a typography card that used the same pattern work that I used for the others.

My original sketch was done on a bus ride home. I was pretty happy with my first attempt so when I got home, I inked it and scanned it in. Usually I make my cards by hand (obvious from the earlier cards with lots of little errors) but because the type was un-even and needed some fixes, I decided that it would be best to finish it off in Photoshop and then print it onto some nice paper.

After cleaning up the image and aligning the letters, it was time to add colour. I think I went through about 10 colours choices before finally settling on orange and yellow. I don’t usually have a background on my work but I thought the work needed something more. Choosing the colour for this was another debacle, but I finally made a decision on blue (favoritism much ;)).

So here’s the final card!

I was worried about putting the textured paper through the printer, thinking the colour would soak in and spread terribly, however I was actually surprised it came out and looked fine!

Photographing also gave me the chance to use my new lens :D! I had some fun with it, though I don’t think the lighting was that ideal so the colours got a little lost on the card. I used both lenses to get some close ups of the detail as well.

I only started making cards recently (December last year) so hopefully I’ll be able to make a lot more this year. I always try and make each card unique too so we’ll see how creative I get with them!