This art card was especially made for a friend who’d always said that this particular painting of mine made her think of a dog she’d had when she was a small girl. She remembered the dog fondly so I thought I’d make her an art card and use it, attached to a greeting card, as a small gift and birthday card in one.

I painted the original picture using the flower forget-me-not as a background, so the wording on it has a double meaning for my friend.

However, you can use any of your own photos or pictures and any other wording you think suitable.

The materials I needed were simple and readily available and I already had them. You will no doubt have similar or will easily be able to substitute other materials for them. I got together some thin card in blue and in yellow, a piece of my own marbled paper (see article on marbling your own paper – link at end of this article), a small print of the dog picture in question and a triangular piece of the forget-me-not background of that picture, which I’d enlarged a bit to show the flowers more clearly. The ‘forget me not’ is just a print out of the words on pale yellow paper. I also used a bit of self-adhesive ribbon – it’s not shown in the following picture, though.

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Start with the blue card (which has to be 2.5" x 3.5" for an ATC or ACEO) as a base. Stick the yellow card to it towards the top left corner but leaving some of the blue showing. You can stick it with glue or with two-sided tape, whatever you find easier. The yellow card just gives the card needed to ‘lift’ the whole ATC out of too much blueness when it’s finished. Stick the marbled paper on top of that. As shown below.

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The little print of the dog goes on next and then the triangular piece of forget-me-not background on top of that towards the bottom left. See picture below:



Deciding just where to put everything and how big it should be actually took ages of messing about to make it look just right. So you can follow these instructions and/or make your own changes and probably come up with something that looks better!

You can see in the finished ATC that I’ve put the self-adhesive ribbon across the join between the background forget-me-nots and the rest of the art card. I’ve also stuck on the words ‘forget me not’ and run around the outside of that with yellow pencil – I used the pencil around the edge of the marbled paper and yellow card, too. Finally I outlined the picture itself with fabric paint which gives a nice 3D effect. Having worked out how I wanted it to look I made two of these cards.



Then I thought I’d put together a variation on a theme and below is the result:



I used the same blue card as the base, and the same yellow card stuck on at an angle and trimmed to fit; the same little print; I printed the words in a bigger size font onto darker yellow paper and tore them out carefully. The hearts are those little confetti pieces you sometimes get in your napkin or in an envelope with some greeting cards – I always keep them to use for this kind of project. The raised golden bumps are dots of fabric paint.

There is no end to the variations of this kind of card you can make. The main thing is to have fun and let your creativity flow!

Creatively yours

Susan

This is my shop on eBay where I’ve put the spare ACEO
and this is my shop on Etsy where I’ve put the other one