One day last year, not long after moving back to Vancouver, I had a random surge of inspiration to try acrylic painting. This is something I’ve never dabbled in before, nor did I have the supplies for. Luckily, there’s a Michael’s within walking distance of my house, so finding said supplies (and plenty of others that weren’t on my shopping list) wasn’t difficult.
I returned home, unpacked the bags, took out a mixed media sketchbook from my craft cupboard and squirted some paint out in a palette. I played for a couple of hours, but decided I wasn’t quite as great at it as I thought I’d be. I packed away the paints in an organizing bin, put them in the back of my craft cupboard, and within a few days, forgot about them. Please tell me I’m not the only one who’s found themselves in this predicament with a new hobby!?
This past weekend, I was inspired by one of my incredibly talented crafty Instagram friends to dig those paints out again and give them another try. This time, I had intentions of turning whatever I painted into cards. It turns out that merging a new adventure with a hobby that already brings me so much joy can result in an entire Saturday disappearing in what felt like just a few minutes – and some fun card designs!
I’ve got three cards to share with you, starting with a shaker. This one began with using a large flat brush to paint some thick brushstrokes on a piece of acetate. I chose navy, minty blue, gold and fuschia as my colours, and ended up applying about 3 coats of each to get more of a solid, less-streaky look. (Note to self: painting on acetate is a very different, more slippery process than painting on paper!)
As I waited for the paint to dry in between coats, I built the rest of what was going to become a shaker card. I die cut a simple white frame to go around the acetate, cut my card base, and stamped the ‘hooray’ sentiment from The Stamp Market Happiest of Birthdays stamp set. My usual go-to confetti is silver, but since I’d already made a gold brushstroke, I chose gold confetti instead.
Once the acetate panel was dry, I attached it to my shaker frame and applied some thin foam strips around the edge. After adding the sequins, I closed up the back of the window with white cardstock and mounted it on my card. To finish, I adhered the ‘hooray’ sentiment in the center and added a few more sequins.
I was having a lot of fun with that flat brush and love the vibrant, bold colour of acrylic paint, so I created 2 more backgrounds – this time, on white cardstock. These dried much faster than the acetate shaker window and didn’t require additional coats. After trimming the panels to 3 3/4 x 5″, I backed them each with foam tape and adhered them to my card bases.
For the sentiments, I used The Stamp Market Gorgeous Greetings stamp set to heat emboss the words ‘all the feels’ and ‘congrats’ in white embossing powder on vellum. The coordinating dies made these super quick to cut out, and I did an additional ‘congrats’ in Island Color Crush Cardstock to layer behind. Tiny glue dots were perfect under the vellum, and I used super thin foam strips under the ‘congrats’ to help it stand out. Finally, a few gold sequins were the finishing touches on each card.
I’d love to hear – do you ever use acrylic paints for cardmaking or otherwise? Any great tips to share? I’m very much a newbie with these so I’m very open to learning!