I think I am still recovering from the last two weeks, although I think it's more the lack of sport than having had to make and post a card everyday, from Wimbledon to le Tour de France to the Olympics, I've been watching sport for the last two months!
Anyway.
Recently, I decided on my target market, although I won't stop with all my other cards! Whilst I was at the Kanzi Kibera concert in July, one of my customers (that sound good!) was commenting that we didn't have many cards for teenage boys - luckily I had a couple of my silhouette guitar cards with me.
That got me thinking a bit. Most of the handmade cards that I have seen are quite fancy and grown up, or brightly coloured and childish and mainly aimed at the female market.
So, bearing this in mind, I set up an album on my Facebook page dedicated especially to those cards aimed at young people. These designs range from Batman to Disney to guitars and over the last couple of years this collection has grown quite a bit. I guess it helps that I am off that age group where all my friends fit into this category. I hope to expand this and I was able to add some more to the album today.
Last month, my brother requested a meme card for his friend's birthday. This proved to be a bit of a challenge for a couple of reasons. 1, his friend had already seen my first meme card - 'Like a Sir' (posted in April) so I couldn't give him that one and 2, I don't know that much about memes so I had to come up with a design that used the right meme in the right way (or else I would be in BIG trouble!).
I finally came up with my design:
This 'rage comic' as they are called comes with the caption 'Challenge Accepted' and of course, he is referring to the giant paper pieced birthday cake next to him. I believe it went down well and I think my reputation precedes me now. Whenever it's one of my brother's friend's birthdays (and he asks for one of my cards) as soon as he gives it to them, they say - before even opening it might I add - 'this is one of Emma's cards isn't it?'
The other cards added to the album were hot off the cutting mat today. I have been reading a manga called Death Note. I began reading it last year but put it down and have only begun to read it again. It's quite thought provoking but is so, so good although you do have to pay close attention in order to follow the logic of the characters.
The two main characters, Raito and 'L' (he doesn't share his real name in the book) work together in order to solve a huge mass murdering mystery. However, we know from the beginning that Raito is the one that has been causing the deaths and wants rid of L.
And this is where the inspiration came from. The main themes in the book are a bit of a Ying and Yang. The obvious one is good vs evil.
The design on these cards are silhouettes of Raito and L face to face. Those who are familiar with the manga, anime or film can (hopefully) see who is who and the significance of the apple in the middle (I don't want to go into too much detail about the story). The apple was made with red card and finished with black pen and white pencil to add detail such as shine and shadow.
I am really happy with these card, and I will probably end up making a template from the two silhouettes to make more of these cards (if needed). Once I had drawn the profiles - using the manga as reference - it was simply a case of cutting them out and sticking them in place and because I cut them out carefully, I was able to use the negatives to create a second card.
I guess it's about time that I wrote about last weekend's festivities. The evening overall was a great success and lots of money was raised for the charity although we didn't seem to sell many cards (despite the 100 I had made and the however many that Carole made)
I want to share some of the cards that I made for the gig. Not all of them, mind you, we'd be here all night!
I began designing after I came across Some Odd Girl, a company that make stamps and digi stamps. If you have the chance, take a look; they are so cute! I've always enjoyed drawing manga and after looking at these stamps, I started doing my own. This one was one of my first designs (Wimbledon was on at the time) and after I was happy with my sketch, I scanned it into the computer and painted it using Photoshop. I was then able to print out multiple images to put on cards. I also wrote the message on the computer. I made six in total, on different colour card blanks.
As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, I had a go at making some more cards with tea-bag folded embellishments. This one is my favourite of the ten I made. I like the colour and using the square that are too small to fold (believe me I tried!) are so effective and they make sure I don't waste any of my stash. I finished off the card with a peel-off message and a length of ribbon.
This next card was made with gifts from my Japanese friend from university. As a leaving present (she was only spending one year in the UK), she gave me so beautiful origami papers especially to make cards with. She also gave me a brush tipped pen, which is what I used to write the message. The papers were perfect to make kimonos out of and I made four of these by mixing and matching.
I decided to make some more of my silhouette cards for the fundraiser mainly because they are simple to make and replicate and the design is really striking. So striking in fact that I sold both of the guitar cards to one person who was after a card for a teenage birthday (and so I found my niche, but more on that later). I also made some camera silhouettes, a couple of them on coloured card blanks.
Finally, I want to show you my second set of my manga cards (I should probably come up with a name for them or something). These were inspired by the gig: being a musical event, what better design to have than a musician? I did these the same was as the tennis ones: sketch, scan, paint, print. I finished this set of six by backing them with red rose patterned vellum and a stamped message. I am going to stick with these characters and I have already started on my next batch of characters with a new theme . . . . watch this space!
