Renelde Napoli: tutorial

A while back, Jessica Brogan hosted an Inspirational Deck Swap. I really wanted to participate. I had prepared my cards and was only missing the quotes, but then I had a shoulder injury which kept me lying down for 1 month and hardly moving for another month so I missed the deadline. I was very disappointed, but figured I would keep them for the next one.

But that's not what happened. Just before Christmas I had a supper with some women I really love, the mothers and owner from the home daycare where both my kids went. After years of seeing each other daily (most of us had two kids who went there) we all became friends. Not only were our kids wonderfully well taken care of but we got friends out of it. Aren't we lucky ! Anyhow, back to the supper. We had a gift exchange. Meaningful gifts, not the Have-a-good-laugh-get-rid-of-it-the-next-week kind. So I decided that I would use my deck of cards as a gift. I'm glad I hadn't put the quotes on it because in our case, French is the common language (there was a mix of french, english, spanish and catalan being spoken at daycare). I also didn't feel comfortable with the idea of quotes. Honestly I tried to find 52 quotes I liked and couldn't. So I decided I would use words instead. Meaningful, positive words. I made a long list of words and sorted them.

I really liked the cards, and the person who received them loves them too. She was very touched. She picks one everyday and puts it on a board on her desk. She also took 4 and put them in a frame. It looks great.

When the birthday for another one of the girls came up, I figured she needed to have her own deck too, so I made another one. Slightly different. I didn't start with a deck of cards this time, just cereal boxes. After seeing how Ingrid Djikers uses them to make her journals I figured I should start using them too because we sure have a lot of those (cereal boxes). I like the bigger surface, and I like the color of the cardboard peeking through the paint. I wanted to make this deck even more special, so this time, since we were all eating together again, I figured I wouldn't write anything on them. Instead, I took a list of words, sharpies and the cards and everybody wrote words that were meaningful to them, some on the list, some not. Everyone really enjoyed it.

So here's a tutorial on how to make them. You'll see it's a similar technique to the envelope tutorial.

You'll need :
cereal boxes
acrylic paint
gesso (the liquid kind - but it could just be white paint)
Stencils
Spray inks
Scrapbook paper
Gel medium
Something to cut up the cardboard
A corner rounder (optional)
Sewing machine (optional)

STEP 1

Cut all the extra tabs on the cereal box, too keep the two big sides. Pour a little bit of gesso and one or two colors of acrylic paint on you cardboard (remember not to mix complementary colors). Spread the paint and gesso randomly with a card (don't spread too much, you want to see the different colors and maybe some bare cardboard) . Let dry.

STEP 2

Choose a stencil (or more) and spray the cardboard.

STEP 3

Stamp a design on the background.

(big flower stamp)

(butterflies and handwriting stamp)

You can also turn these backgrounds into postcards or book covers or anything else really. It's easy to have a few lying around just in case...

STEP 4 (optional)

Use a sewing machine to create random shapes on the cards (sorry no pictures for that one, but in the finished cards you can see a couple that have sewing on them)

STEP 5

Glue scrapbook paper (or any other paper you like) on the back of the cardboard.You can actually do this step at any point, but if you want to sew on your cards you have to decide if you want the sewing to show on the back of the cards - in which case you do step 5 before step 4 - or not)

(I used old world atlas pages)

STEP 5

Use a paper trimmer to cut the cardboard in rectangles that are 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. Round the corners.

STEP 6

Add word or quote

It turns out Jessica decided to hold another swap a few months after the first one. This time there was no way I was going to miss it. Here's a picture of some of the cards I did.

Since it's supposed to be quotes, I made an effort to find some I liked and finally did. In one of the tutorials for the cards someone printed quotes on tracing paper, so that you can still see the image through it. I really liked the idea, so I tried that. It turns out I don't really like it so much. I don't know if it's the printer, or the paper, but the ink is definitely not smear-proof and since I wanted to use gel medium to glue the quotes, and the paper is so thin it curls, it was hard to not smudge them at all. I ruined a few... I'll have to figure out something else for next time. I did just write on about a quarter of them.

I can't wait to receive a deck full of other people's artwork ! It's such a great idea, thanks Jessica.

Before going to Artfest I couldn't figure out what to bring for trades. I tried this and that and at some point I thought envelopes would be fun and it's something you always need. So I played around and started having a lot of fun making them.

Not long ago, Jessica Brogan, whom I met first through http://hellosoulhellobusiness.com/ (or HSHB) and then at Artfest asked me if I could make a tutorial for my painted envelopes. I liked the idea, so here it is...

You will need :

Paper, whatever color you want, thicker than printer paper, but not cardstock (it is a bit too thick to fold. It works but makes a pretty heavy envelope. )
Doily, punchinella and/or any stencil you like
Color wash spray (I use Adirondack, but also Radiant Rain by Creative imaginations. The colors are very bright even when dry and the sprayer doesn’t get clogged – unlike the Adirondack ones. But really, any kind will do, it doesn’t have to be watersoluble or not, it will just have a different effect in the end).
White liquid gesso (preferably one that doesn’t cover too much)
Background stamp
Stamp pad (an ink that dries quickly like Stazon or Colorbox Liquid Chalk. Whatever you have)
Acrylic ink (liquitex or FW have great colors)
Scoring board with envelope tool (or an envelope template, there are tons on the web)
Bone folder
Glue tape (or double-sided tape or any king of good glue that you like)

I recommend doing several envelopes at once

Cut a piece of paper in a 7 ½” square (it makes a 5 ¼” by 4” envelope)

Use a doily (or any stencil you like) to make a pattern with color wash spray (you can see my cotton doily has seen many colors...)

Let it dry a little and paint white gesso (preferably one that is more transparent) in a random way over the pattern. Let dry.

Put a couple of drops of acrylic ink and rub them on the paper with your fingers.

Make some marks with inkpads and punchinella

Use a background stamp and cover the whole paper (script in my case) with a light color (like bronze)

Here are a few papers. You can see I added a few letters with a lettering stencil.

I decided to add some circles with a bottlecap and distress ink (any ink will do)

Feel free to skip or repeat any of those steps. You can see a little bit in the first picture I didn’t always follow the same guidelines. Sometimes I painted gesso on through a stencil or through the punchinella. Sometimes I added paint here and there. I also used the sprays with a letter stencil instead of the doilie. Feel free to make any king of marks you want. There’s all sorts of options.

Once you like the way it looks you are ready to fold.

Place your painted square painted face down on the scoring board. Using the triangle (envelope tool) score at 3 ¼”, turn, score at 2 5/8”, turn, score at 3 ¼”, turn and score at 2 5/8”.

You will get 4 little triangles not quite in the middle of each side. Cut them out on the scoring lines (actually it’s better if you don’t see the scoring line once you are done cutting).

Time to fold ! Use a bone folder and fold all sides toward the center of the unpainted side. Make sure all sides fold nicely, cut out a little more if necessary.