Inspired by my significant other's basketball and other sports card hobby, I decided to turn their childhood photos into collectible cards as a gift. Through this project I corrected photos, created individual graphic designs, and learned new techniques for the all-important holographic/foil/texture details. Though some existing art was used such as some clip art or characters, layout and composition were completely my own design.
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The Rookie Card. Utilizing the colors of the Fleer Jordan Rookie card and also keeping in mind the composition of the photo.
Extra care had to be taken setting the embossing powder here. The card was printed on a gloss photo paper which can crack when heated too quickly. To heat embossing powder onto the gloss it can take several attempts to get it so that the paper does not crack. Glow in the dark stars were placed after all embossing was complete.
Embossing powder on matte photo paper. To achieve the precise lines, the glue was drawn on and powder added in stages. All was heat embossed together.
Hand foiled with heat foil pen. Each color was drawn on, the difficulty was making sure it aligned. Because the foil covers the area you are working on, the exact placement on the final product is a bit of a guess.
Extensive hand drawn glue lines for heat embossing. This was done in stages to apply the powder as the glue dries faster than being able to draw all of those lines. Then the powder is cleaned up and all heat set together. I opted for the matte photo paper as this had a very high likelihood of cracking if done on gloss and the time it took to just draw the lines out weighed the worth of the risk.
Three different heat emboss powders here: Silver, Gold, and Clear. Each were hand drawn glue and done in stages for powder application to prevent cross contamination. Then everything was set together. The red lettering was gone over in a metallic gel pen.
This one took a lot of experimenting. The alcohol dye effect is very difficult to get on photo paper as photo paper is emulsion based and wants to soak in ink. Making sure I was able to protect the subject or remove ink in that area was a challenge. Finally landed on doing a refractor sticker paper over the photo which provided the non-porous surface perfect for alcohol ink and allowed me to remove the ink on the subject.
A more simple design. I wanted to really evoke the spirit of a cheesy family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells and make sure the graphics were simple and bold as if this was a souvenir photo bought there.
I had so much fun with this one. Really playing on the comic book visuals from the Adam West Batman show. I opted for two versions. One in which I pulled and vectorized the onomatopoeia famous in the comics and show and just added it to the card. This however feels very crowded and opted for the surprise version. You get to see the subject a bit better but when you interact with it with the black light you get the real POP of those words giving the unexpectant viewer the same feeling of having the words pop up on the screen during the show but with the added benefit of having done the action that triggered it.
Very inspired by the 90s graphic layouts and the various holographic elements that became all the rage. This was the perfect cringy photo complete with shirt tucked into long shorts and the silly pose.
Another vacation card that I wanted to really evoke the specific location of and make it feel like a souvenir card. In this instance the original photo had a background stranger in a weird position- perfect for Merlin to be added! And of course you can't leave out Archimedes who wonderfully balances Merlin. This also was inspired by the newer photos Disney added with Photopass packages where surprise characters can be edited in.
Hand foiled elements. To get the placement of these lines I had to build a small jig. As stated above with the Happy Holidays card, when hand foiling, the foil covers the image and where you are drawing and if it lines up becomes a guess. It took a few attempts to get just right .
This family photo was a bit of a struggle to figure out the best way to present it. I wanted to juxtapose the sweet family New Year with the Y2K panic and imagery. Finally landed on taking the headlines directly from Weekly World News. Playing with context is a very interesting thing especially when talking to people that don't remember or were not born during the hype surrounding the turn of the century.
Utilizing school colors and mascots, I wanted to invoke the feeling that this was from a series of graduation cards. Making it feel like this could have been what you could have purchased at the time.
Utilizing school colors and mascots, I wanted to invoke the feeling that this was from a series of graduation cards. Making it feel like this could have been what you could have purchased at the time.
Being a big milestone, I wanted to play with this and bring in a video game element to it. Making it an unlockable achievement as if this could have been a still shot or cut scene. Added bonus to get to use the refractor overlay.
For this layout it felt like the glossy photo paper was necessary to the overall look which led to a few difficulties.
To protect the areas that were to not be embossed (name and also Cubs logo) I applied heat resistant tape. This of course would never have come off the matte paper.
Over that I used the glue pen to create the texture and apply the powder. Setting that powder too several attempts - I have a pile of failed cards where the paper bubbled and cracked beyond acceptability. In the end one small crack at the top was the best I could produce given the timeline.
Through experimentation, I found that removing the tape that had embossing powder on it after the setting process was the best way to proceed as it helped protect the paper. Removing it before setting added to the stress while heating it.
Creating a layout that felt like it could have been a purchasable card at the even was a lot of fun for a branded event.
Because I wanted the subjects to stand out and not be included in the refractor portion, I opted to cut them out, color the edges of the paper and apply them on top of the card. Optimally for mass produced cards this would all be on one sheet and the subjects would be masked from the refractor but for a one-off intricate image this is the most efficient way to go for a more precise look. I did consider cutting the refractor sheet but the likelihood of that matching perfectly and applying perfectly were too low for the timeline of the project.