How to Make an Artist Trading Card

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.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Playing cards
• Glue
• Embellishments
• Photographs
• Paint
• Paint brushes

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 race track 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.

Tips & Warnings

• An oil paint artist might paint a miniature painting on the card canvas.

Resources

• Craft Classics

[artcardist]

on 7/25/2009 I love the idea of using the card as a standard of measurement for ATCs. Keeps it strong for the collage work too!

[sherryeam]

on 5/10/2009 Great article about making artist trading cards. Good job.