Deco Fan

I don’t really think of myself as an artist. I’m really more of a crafter. When you do a craft, it is like cooking – use the same recipe, you get the same results.

I made an Artist Trading Card for a deco fan swap. It has a lot of steps, but if I follow the steps again, I will end up with another of the same card. I could make dozens of them, in theory. Here is the card (ink is darker in real life):



There are three main parts to making this card. First, the background:

1. Take off-white cardstock, cover with a coat of Mod Podge.
2. Tear up small pieces of text. I used a phone book.
3. Apply the torn pieces to the wet Mod Podge.
4. Apply another coat of Mod Podge.
5. Cover the cardstock with waxed paper.
6. Dry emboss with an embossing folder.
7. Let dry.
8. Sand the raised areas.
9. Sponge distress ink onto the sanded areas (I used broken China) and edges.
10. Trim to 2.5 by 3.125 inches.

Next I needed to make the fans. I knew I was going to use teabag folding, but I needed the right paper. I didn’t have a paper that I liked, so I made mine.

11. Take green patterned scrapbooking paper, and ink the back with distress ink. (Broken China and Pine Needles)
12. Punch circles out of the paper. (4 for each fan)
13. Apply distress ink to the edges of the front of the paper.
14. Give a light Pearl Ex wash.
15. Fold each circle using the Dahlia fold.
16. Glue in place on the background.
Now it is time to embellish the card. It also needed a backing, as the background is too textured to write upon.
17. Using 5 inches of copper wire, make a wire wrapped eye on one end, and coil the other end.
18. Tie a few inches of ribbon in the eye for a “wrist strap”.(it's not glued down, it just happenes to be laying that way in the scan)
19. Glue copper piece in place with E6000.
20. Cut backing cardstock to 2.5 by 3.5 inches.
21. Punch a scalloped edge on one side.
22. Glue embossed panel in place.

As you can see, there are a lot of steps, a lot of different materials, and a lot of skills in play to make this card. As long as it took to make this card (hours and hours), it would be too precious to me for me to trade it away if it were the only one, but as it happened, I made seven at the same time – one for me to keep, and six to send in for the swap.

You can only imagine how I felt when the swap host announced that she wanted all the cards for the swap to be DIFFERENT.