Best Wishes: Mixed Media Greeting Cards

1. Introduction: Reaching out to your loved ones is more important than ever. Receiving a lovely card. The old-fashioned way is so special, especially these days when our inboxes and mailboxes are filled with advertisements and bills. My name is Jennifer Laurel Keller. I'm an artist and instructor, but what I really do is help people gained creative confidence. I am usually the worst and sending cards for birthdays and holidays, It's hard to make cards personal. I don't know which to pick and what to write. And so often I don't have anything ready until it's too late. So in this class, best wishes How to make mixed media greeting cards. I thought it would be nice to make several unique handmade cards with tons of personality. Through the process of collaging with acrylic paint. You'll learn how to make these vintage inspired cards that you'll be proud to send out and Brighton someone's day. In the lessons, I'll share techniques for how to create an interesting background with unexpected elements. There will be tips on layering, depths and transparent acrylic painting. And finally, I'll show you how your cards to create a delicious when sickle feeling. This class is right for you. If you want to use up some of your decorative papers, learn a few mixed media collage techniques and have a blast, loosening up and playing. So are you ready to make some cards? Let's get started. 2. Materials: Hello and welcome to the Materials lesson. Alright, so I'm going to start with some cards. Of course, I have cards with envelopes here, and these are actually cards that I ordered for thank you cards for my wedding, which was a couple of years ago. And it comes with these end cards that are blank. And then I had a painting of mine that was I painted from my wedding bouquet, printed, but I ordered way too many of them. So I'm can then use these and just go straight over the top. So that's up to you if you want to use a blank card that you purchase blank from the art supply store, or use cards that you don't necessarily like very much or that you have too many of you can do that. I also have a palate. I have a glass palette with the edges taped off. And I'm going to use some bright brushes. Flat brushes are fine just in any size to the scale of what you need. And I just keep other brushes on handed case. I feel like using those and I have my scissors. And I'm keeping my acrylic paints nearby. But in this class I only use titanium white and burnt umber. I'm also using that medium and I put it out into a squeeze bottle so that I can apply it to my palate a little bit easier. And I also have some acrylic gel medium. This is the regular viscosity. It comes in soft, regular and heavy. So this is kind of like the consistency of peanut butter. And that's really good for grabbing things that are a little bit more heavy. You'll also want one to two pints of water and a paint rag. And then I have my paper scraps and focal points. I rounded up a few scraps from other projects just to use up what I had handy because working on the background, you can just use anything really that you find interesting. And the scale is pretty small for greeting cards were not doing larger mixed media art pieces. So you can use smaller scraps and just kinda use up the odds and ends that you've used in the past. And then you'll also want to use a few focal points. I here I have some stickers, I have some floral paper scraps. Some items with texture. Books are really great. Old books. And then some text where you might be able to find some beautiful words to add as your best wishes on the cover of the card. Just some nice little sentimental words. And I have this book that has a nice font and the size is really nice and it has some really nice quotes in it that I can use words from. So I'm going to be ripping into this in the class mainly, but you can find your words anywhere and mix it up. Anything you find. I always like to find my papers kind of like found objects. I think the more you mix it up, the more interesting it is, and the more special it is for the person who receives the card. Because the paper saying like they're gathered and kept as a treasure to use just for them. So I wouldn't go with anything too thick, especially if you have cards that have envelopes already because there's not very much clearance on the cards. So we're gonna be getting into the background Next. I can't wait to jump in and I will see you there. 3. Background: Hello and welcome to the background lesson. In this lesson you can see we're going to start with the background. I applied the first layer to both the front and the back of the card. So you can decide how much coverage you want, whether you want to have the design extends the back of the card or not. There was some writing on my cards that I wanted to cover up, so I chose to do the back as well. So let's get into that. Okay. So I have my envelopes and my cards, and I'm going to just check out how much clearance I have around the edge of my card to the envelope. So it looks like it's going to be about an eighth of an inch. So I don't want to go thicker than that and I'm not even gonna come close. I don't use anything that's too thick in this class. But in case you were getting into some thicker materials, you want to keep that in mind. So now I'm gonna pull a couple of the cards that have the print than I had printed on it of the wedding bouquet. So I'm going to start ripping into a few papers. And I'm just at this point using papers that have patterns and textures. Nothing that's too much of a focal point because I want to save this for later. I have some birds and butterflies and some feathers and things like that that would make some good focal points. So I'm gonna keep those to the side. And at this point I'm just looking at things that I won't mind if they get covered up with paint or other papers. And the layered look is really what's going to keep this interesting to the person who receives the card? There are gonna be beautiful elements peeking through several layers of papers and acrylic paint. And it'll just kinda keep them on their toes. Looking around the card, floral and botanical elements are always fun. But I've got some sheet music, some textured papers, some tissue paper, some things with writing in it. And I'm dividing it up into piles on each card that I think the colors are going to go well together. So It's just what's pleasing to your eye. You don't have to put too much thought into this and keeping things fairly, fairly neutral. There are definitely some colors in there. But I don't wanna go to saturated and loud because it's just kind of the mood that I'm in. I just want to have some breathing room with the color palette. And neutrals are great with that. So I'm also applying some scraps to the back of the card to cover up the words from the card. And it kind of makes a nice little place to adds more personality. So now I have my acrylic medium poured out on my palette. And I'm going to begin with my first card. So I grab a brush and I'm just going to start diving in. I applied the acrylic medium nicely down to the palette. I leave a few ridges showing and then smooth over the top with more acrylic medium. And that's going to seal the top a bit and make it lay down really nicely. So I apply the acrylic medium in a larger area than the paper is taking up. And so there are some that I can pick back up with my brush and smooth over the top. And I like to bridged the gap between one paper in the other. I'm not using the whole thing. Where none of the papers are touching him layering over the edges. And if something has a straight edge on it like this piece, I can apply it down on the edge of the card. And then also keep an eye out for fun little sayings within the papers that you're using. And those are just a lot of fun for people to discover as they look around, because we're gonna be using layers over the top and transparent layers of acrylic paint. And to see these little mementos peeking through makes it so much more personal and fun and I'm more of an exploratory experience. Right. So just keeping that going. I'm not putting too much thought into the placement like this piece goes over the edge and that's fine. It's just going to give the card more personality in the end. Don't worry about covering things up. It's all part of the process and it's going to keep it more whimsical and more artsy. We're not doing Hallmark store bought cards. Write down this is going to be really lose, really whimsical, really layered. And so much fun. I love how that piece has a little bit of metallic to it. So I'm just holding things up, deciding where they could go. Not every square inch of the card has to be covered in a lot of print. You can leave areas that have negative space to let things breathe. I think on this first card, I went a little bit further into the busy-ness of the papers, but I was just having fun and there's no problem with that. Just have fun and layer your papers up until you're happy with them. And don't consider anything too precious. Because we are going to be layering some more and things are going to get covered up some more. So you kind of just play around with where the papers can go and let go. Resign yourself to And, you know, accepting that things are gonna get covered up. And I love this old book paper because it's yellowed, giving that vintage feel. Here's another corner for the other side. And this acrylic medium is going to hold really, really well. It dries clear, of course. And it, it's extremely strong. Textures are wonderful. The natural paper that I'm going to apply in just a moment. When you apply acrylic paint over the top of textured papers. It makes everything so tactile and interesting to look at because the texture on the paper really picks up that pain. And you don't have to cover every square inch of the card either. You can leave some white showing and just put more paint down in that area when it's time to work with the acrylic paint. Ok. So don't be afraid to just allow things to develop as they will. You're going to be paying attention to what the piece is asking for in the moment with the supplies that you have on hand. You can balance the piece with texture and color and print pattern. And just create kind of a balanced piece there. So there's the first card. And let's begin on the background of the second card. Right? So here I have the card that has the writing on the back and I'm going to cover that up. And so I'm just putting less on the back and then I am on the front. I'm kind of keeping the back more, more simple. I have this really old sheet music that's very yellowed. And sheet music is always a fun thing to have around the studio. You can find it at thrift stores and old bookstores and things like that for fairly cheap. So I'm just going straight over the card, just filling that space in. And if you are working over a card that already has something on it, you can leave some of it exposed. And then it just becomes another element in the design. So moving along, I'm doing my words. And this is a different language. So I think it's really interesting to just have that variation from one language to another. It just keeps a level of mystery. Even if the person can't read it. It just adds a nice. Pattern to the composition, more sheet music. And even when things are rips on the diagonal, I like the sheet music, the lines on the sheet music to be nice and street with just a personal preference of mine. And there I used a flower with a white background and cut edges. So I'll probably mass that later with some white paint to kind of blur that harsh edge that's cut. I do a lot of ripping in my paper scraps. And sometimes a straight-line looks kind of out of place. So you can, you can work that in and kind of camouflage in, in with the acrylic paint that's coming up soon. Here I have some maps. And I like how the teal Aqua Color is balanced in the card design, in the composition. And lovely. And there are few. There's one area that's kind of hanging off the edge, so I'll come back and cut that later. And that looks pretty good. Moving on to the third background, let's begin with a darker paper. Check paper has some metallic and black in it. And it comes across as kinda brown, So it's sort of neutral but unexpected. Here's an old page from a book and it actually has in bold and has a last name of somebody I know. So I'm gonna use that as an element that I could give this particular friend to show that United is thinking of them when I made it. And that can always be really nice. So if you notice things that are specific to people, you know, you can kind of tuck them into the background, leave them showing. And then it becomes a fun way to recognize the person as they look more deeply at the card. And that book page that I apply down to the front, I just tucked I folded it and tucked it under so that I could see the size of the page, but I'm going to cut that off later. Here's another page from a book that has that different language in it. And I'm going to cover up the riding on the back. Later. I'm going to use the acrylic paint to kind of cover up that bright white on the page. So it's always an option to change the color of your papers with acrylic paint later. And you're gonna get some rippling, you're gonna get some crinkling. And that's okay because it just shows that the pieces handmade, we're not going for perfection here. No matter what, your friends and family who received these cards are going to think they are so special. Even if you just kind of use this as a fun, loose way to make something that's not perfect. The people who receive this are going to really, really enjoy them because they're so unique. And they're going to be able to tell that you spent time doing this just for them. You didn't just go to the store and buy a standard pack of cards that are mass produced. This is unique, one of a kind and very artsy and fun. And they're gonna, they're gonna find it really, really special. So I'm using some darker elements in this card. And I just wanted to mention how when you use dark pages or dark scraps on a somewhat neutral background, you want to balance it out a little bit so that the eye moves around the page. So now I'm just cutting off anything that was sticking over the edge. It's easier to cut it from the back. I think. At least being a right-handed person, it is I'm not sure. It just kinda depends. Okay. Those are ready to go for the next lesson where we're going to work on the acrylic layers. So I will see you there. 4. Acrylic Layer: Hello and welcome to the acrylic layer lesson. And in this lesson you can see that we use the brown paint, which is the burnt umber and the titanium white to create kind of a grungy vintage feel. So let's have a look at that process. Alright, so I'm gonna take some white and squeeze it out onto my palette. You don't need very much. This goes along way with these transparent layers. So we're not painting a painting from scratch. You don't need a whole lot of pain right now. And I'm gonna put down some scrap paper down on the table just to keep the paint from getting on the table. Even though I have paint on my table already. And I mixed in some of the acrylic medium that I was using for gluing. And I'm mixing it into the burnt umber here. So mix more acrylic medium in the beginning. And then as you move along, you can determine whether you want to add less for a more opaque look, or you can add more medium for a more transparent look. So it's easier to add more color than it is to take it away. And it might get on the inside a little bit, but that's okay. And then if you add too much paint, you can always come through with your paint rag and smooth out any brushstrokes or removes some of your paint to allow something to show through. And now I've got my white and I'm using a little bit of paint on my brush and a very light brushstroke. I'm painting just from the end of the brush. I'm not smashing the brush down into the card unless I want to push a lot of paint out. So the more pressure you use on the brush, the more paint won't come out, and the more opaque it will be. So in this case I'm not using any medium. I'm just using what is called a dry brush technique, which is when you're not painting with very much paint and you're not painting with very much pressure. And that allows some of the details to come through from the bottom layer. And you can smooth it out with your finger a bit, or you can smooth it out with the brush as well just by coming through with the brush strokes from different angles too. Spread the paint out in different directions so it doesn't look like one big streaky movement. If you keep your brush coming in from different angles, you're going to have that grungy kind of vintage look. And now I'm just coming in with more in any place where I want to have a lighter color. And I do really like having a lighter card. Just for an aesthetic. Here you can see that that little piece of paper up at the top that was black. It looks really cool when I use the white over the top and I'm kind of laying it down at this horizontal angle and it's allowing the texture in that paper to really pick up the white paint. So here I started with the white paint on my second card and I'm going to blur the edges where I have contrast from one paper to the other. And I'm not putting too much thought into it, but I kind of thought that I'd like to just tone down the contrast in this situation. Make it a lighter, brighter card. And you can make this as soft or chunky with your brushstrokes as you want. You can smooth again, you can smooth that out with your rag. And then experiment a little bit with the way that you use the brush. And now I'm adding the burnt umber with a little bit of acrylic medium to get that transparent color, which is going to make the paper on the back that was white look really nice and aged around the edges, which is fun. So don't be afraid to just get in there and play. That's big a takeaway that I want you to get in this class is that even though this is for other people, it is also kind of like an art journaling practice where you can really let go, have fun, let your personality show through a little bit here because it's not just about the person who receives the card. It's just as much about the sender, the giver of the card. And sharing your friendship, sharing your love, and having it come from the heart. So making it your own is definitely encouraged. Allow your personality to come through. It doesn't have to look sticky, sweet, or really cheesy. You can make this grungy, you can make it vintage, You can make it steam punk, you can make it metal. You know, you can really do anything that you enjoy if you and the person share a love of something like books or horseback riding or any kind of passion. Hobby. Now is a really fun way to share your passion with your friend and in a way that is thoughtful and heartfelt. And so I'm doing just more of the same here, blurring the edges, letting things peek through the acrylic paint with that transparency. Using the, the dry brush technique as well as the acrylic medium either way. And playing around with how much pressure I am using, where I want to blur things out and make them miss steam. It doesn't have to be perfectly uniform. You can have things remain fully exposed and just do the edges. Or have it be kind of haphazard. The less uniform it is, the more it's gonna seem really organic and fun. But if you like more precision, you can put more thought into having things be symmetrical and blended really nicely. So it's really like I was saying, your personality coming through in an artistic way. And that's looking really fun. I love using acrylic paint over the texture in these handmade natural papers. And just, just go until it feels like it's time to stop. You can overwork this and cover everything up and just use the texture. It's just up to you. So finding your stopping point is going to be something that is a feeling and also comes with a little bit of practice. Alright, so up next, we're going to get into building up more layers. So I'll see you there. 5. Building Up Layers: Hello and welcome to the building up the layers lesson. And as you can see in this lesson, I'm just adding more elements down over our acrylic layer to give it more personality and more depth. So let's have a look. Okay, so I have my dried cards from the acrylic layer lesson. And I'm starting to pull some elements that have a little bit more personality. Maybe have a little bit more of a focal point feeling to them, as well as some stickers and a few little embellishments. It can be a crinkly tissue. It can be something that's more representational like elif or an interesting paper to backup something that's kinda small. If you notice on the right-hand card. I have these stickers of Michelangelo's David, but they're a little bit small. So I'm actually going to work on building a little nest for that with some solid paper that has some texture to it. And I think I even change it up in the end, but that's where my head's at right now. I have some stickers that I plan on using. And I was gifted these stickers. They're fairly old and some of them weren't even sticky anymore. So I kind of had to use those with a little bit of trial and error, but I pulled some stickers as a few focal points as well. And I'm just gonna keep those aside as an option. Here's a Dooley and it has this scalloped edge on one side where I had torn off the more decorative scale or boiling area of the paper. And I like that against the darker brown paper. So I'm thinking about having that contrast with that pattern there. And so I can just kind of build up my composition at this point, keeping in mind contrast, texture, pattern, color, how things are balanced, and then how to bring it together with different types of elements where they meet. So sometimes it's nice to just lay another base down and then play around. So here I am ripping off a sticker. And I think that would look nice. It's a circle. The sticker is a circle. And then I popped over that. So you can, you can kind of create frames within the composition. I don't think I ended up staying there, but I do like that in hindsight. And I think it's a nice little lesson that you can create little frames within the composition for smaller elements to go on top of if they don't have quite enough presence. On the other hand, here's this big image of the globe. It's cut in half, and that's going to be a large presence in the card. That doesn't need much because of its size and scale to the card. So just rummaging through a little bit more. Sometimes things just fall on your lap out of your scrap pile and you end up finding something that really works. So that piece with the filigree and the scroll that I put over to the right, I'm gonna work with that. There's a feather that would make a nice little focal point and some little scraps that I can consider the stamp. I was considering it, but I think I decided it wasn't quite right. And this says the darkest shadows, which I think is kind of an interesting thing to have peek through some acrylic paint. Kind of as a juxtaposition to the best wishes idea like overcoming your darkest shadows or, you know, having opposing ideas. It doesn't all have to be rainbows and butter cups. You know. You can have things that are a little bit more poetic. So I haven't general idea of how my compositions are going to be right now. And I'm going to glue a few things down. So just coming through with that acrylic medium again and do this kind of swirling motion. And then come up over the top just like in the first layer and smooth out the top. I think that looks really nice with that vintage acrylic paint job that we did with the brown and the white, just kinda that aged look. Here's some crinkly tissue in this kind of olive green color. And it has a lot of fibers and texture and that, so that's really fun. So I'm, I'm not only just looking at color, but textural quite a bit. And that could be a fun base for some words. Something to add as our sentiment for the card later on, tissue paper that has a white background will melt right into the background. Once you add the acrylic medium over the top, it just kind of melts away and becomes really, really transparent and almost just disappears. And the print that's on the tissue paper will come forward. So that's always a lot of fun. Here's my feather. And it's kinda getting lost in the background. So I brought it over to a different card. So things are always up for changing, not being tied down by one thing that you were counting on using and you need it to happen. You know, you can always change the placement or just decide it's not quite right for this card, but you can use it in the future when the time is right. Now I'm applying my globe to the back of the card. And that'll be fun to flip over and see this unexpected big bold. Element on the back, it's bumped up right to the crease of the card. Here's more map to kind of balance that the world feeling and the color as well, because there's that light blue in it. It's not from the same map. So we have some variation. And it, but it is kind of unifying that idea of maps and the world. So I like this little scalloped edge just kinda hanging over this other area of color here. Sometimes it's the small details that make a big difference. Next, I have some tissue paper with a star on it and it does have a few more natural fibers in this tissue. So those show up once the thinner parts of the tissue have gone away as well. So you can kind of see, especially once I show you the close up at the end, that that tissue really has a nice texture to it. Okay, so now I'm going to apply Jon this green paper just as a solid. It does have a texture, has got this kind of crinkly texture. It was a little bit tricky. So sometimes you'll run into that where you get a tricky paper and you just have to work with it a little bit longer to get it to stick down. And if it gets a little bit messed up, that's fine because we're just going for this kind of wins the coal, wrath, grungy luck. That's just a piece from the music, the sheet music. And then this little piece of scrolling border that I'm just testing out in the different corners. And I think I'll use it up on the top left. But I needed some more acrylic medium. So don't I'm skimp on the acrylic medium just because it's running off on your palate, you wanna just reapply it down. And if you waste a few drops of acrylic medium, Don't worry about that. It's really not that big of a deal. It's better to have a good application. Make sure things are sturdy and glued down nicely and just feel like they're going to hold. Here's some more of that tissue with the star. I love tissue for the fact that it can kind of blur out some of those harsh edges and add some more natural rough elements to it. So you can see that natural fiber hanging off of the edge is really interesting and it's thicker, so it's going to show up more once it's glued down and get all that smoothed out. And let's put that feather in that card. It'll be a nice focal point and there's some red in it, which goes with the other little pops of red in the card. So you can always tie things together from one side to the other to create more balance. Runs a pretty strong colors soil like adding just a little bit of it. Okay, here's Michelangelo's David. And I thought it would be a nice element to put on the back of a card. Just as a little something extra. Deciding where that's gonna sit. And I like crossing the bridge between the two papers. It ties those two together. And so remember that of course the backs are gonna be upside down when you have them lengths flat. So up next we're going to be working on the words lesson. We're gonna find some nice words to include in our best wishes cards. So I'll see you there. 6. Adding Words: Hello and welcome to the words lesson. In this lesson, you can see I just added a few words to our cards to give them more personality. So I have this book, it's called a Guide for the advanced soul. And what you do is flip through it. You think about a problem and you flip through the book and you find an inspirational quote that's supposed to address your problem. But I really like the font in it, and I like the phrasing in some of these. So I found one that said, Never be afraid. And then when that said interest in the world. And these are kind of fragments of larger quotes. And I like how that went with the world and the Globe. And other one says peace of mind. Find good everywhere. So just snipping that out. Books that are written in a very foreign tongue. I thought that was kind of interesting. So again, this doesn't have to be happy birthday or Merry Christmas. It can be more poetic. Just anything that stands out to you. And even if you don't know who you're going to send the cartoon later, you can make a lot. And then when the event arises, you'll just pick a card. So I'm choosing places that are kind of blank, that have a little bit of texture or color underneath them. It's okay if they overlap several papers. Sometimes that makes it more interesting, but just tuck them in wherever it feels good for you. And these are a little bit on the small side, but my cards or four by six. If you have a five by seven card, you might want to have a larger font. It just depends on how prominent you want the words. And then I have a quote for the back to in some cases, which is kinda nice. Details are really going to make the card a lot of fun. Okay? And then this is the one that said interests in the world. And so I wanted to put it by my my world image on the back. Kind of like a traveler vibe. Okay, so up next we're going to start working on a few more embellishments to round out these cards. And I will see you there. 7. Final Embellishments: Hello and welcome to the final layer where we add some lovely embellishments and focal points. So I'm building up to my focal points. I have kind of an idea of what I want to use. I have some birds and butterflies and stuff like that that I have off to the side. But I'm building up with a few fun little swirly, please. These are stickers that are metallic. And I thought I would just pop some ion and these type of things look really good in threes or odd numbers. So if you add some small embellishments, it's fun to add a few to kind of circulate the eye around the artwork on the card. And that's going to give it a nice feeling. And these are really delicate. Luckily, they're not paper, they're kind of like a vinyl and they didn't rip. So these are some of the stickers that were gifted to me and I hadn't used them before, but I'm really happy with them. I really like the one that I added over the feather because there was a lot of contrast and give that feather a lot of personality. These were in the same batch of stickers that were gifted to me and they were not really sticky anymore or the sticky part had adhere down to the backing on that pack. So I had to use some acrylic medium to get them to stick down just like a regular paper or they kind of peeled away. So that worked out. And then I have the birds and they have these tabs around them so that it makes it easier to cut them out around all the detail of the birds. And I liked that and I kept it. So it's kind of subtle. Their Tabs, paper tabs around the outline of the bird. And I just allowed them to stay in place. Now that bird was getting a little bit lost in its background. So I will come back over with a little bit of acrylic paint to create more contrast on that. I added the feet from Michelangelo's David to the other back of the card, flipped it upside down because the back is upside-down. And here's a little bit of wispy white acrylic paint so that my bird doesn't get lost in the background. So if you ever find that you want something to stand out a little bit more, if that focal point is dark, you want to add a lighter color. And if the focal point is light, you want to add a darker color. And that goes for cool and warm tones to so if you ever really warm object and it's getting lost in a warm background, you can add some behind it, something like a blue or green. And it will also add contrast that way with color. And I'm gonna do the same thing over here. Just add a little bit more paint behind that more opaque Li so that it really stands out and I can kind of fan it out around that area of paint so that it blends nicely into the background. And then kinda dance around and do a few more little hits of color even over those stickers. That was kinda fun to get the elevation of those stickers with some acrylic paint. And a bit over here too, just to brighten up that composition. And blur some of those edges, making it more mystical and mysterious. Hmm. Okay, here's some more stickers. I thought I would use that turtle. By the other circular items on the back of that card. My acrylic paint is dry now, so I'm going to add my birds down with the acrylic medium. So just getting those in place. And on the third card, on the right, I am, I decided not to put a bird or another focal point because the feather felt like enough for me. And then I have the strip of little snippet of paper that I'm going to add to the back of that card. All right, so just coming in with that acrylic minium, getting an ice layer down. And then popping in the bird tabs in all. Letting some of that. This is kind of like giving a clue to the process which people, I don't know. It's kinda fun allowing things to be imperfect and rough and ready. You know. Here's my other bird. Somebody might not even notice this. At first glance. It's going to be for the second or third luck. You know, you keep looking, you keep circulating through all of the layers, exploring the mixed media elements. And then you might notice it says this in a previous layer, or she left the tabs on her bird. Or there's a correlation between that phrase of writing and this picture in the card. So it can just be fun making comparisons. And things mean different things to different people. You never know, you never know. So I'm just adding a little bit more paint where I think it could be fun. I'm, I'm just kind of playing at this point with what are my last minute adjustments. I want to make sure that my card has enough light and dark in it. I use, I usually end a piece with adding shadows and highlights when I'm doing an actual painting and I do the same thing with mixed media and collage. I wanted to make sure that the lights and darks are all represented. That the colors are not just kinda squished in the middle of how light or dark they are. And that's going to give it more contrast and more interest as a piece of art. So I like those circles all in a row. The repetitions fine. It keeps the eye moving around. And then just kind of like an underlining that whole area with this scrap of paper. And that was from an old project are actually my last project that I did about collaging you're home and doing a portrait of your house. I use that for the roof, like shingles. Here's another circular cutout flower. This is just from kinda wrapping paper, kinda paper. And I put it where the darker papers meet in that L shape. Ok, so here's some washy tape. If you don't have washy tape, that's fine. But I noticed that when I folded the cards, the paper was kind of separating in this awkward way. And I just wanted to cover it up with a little bit of washing tape and wash you. Tape is a paper masking tape that they sell in lots of fun prints. You can buy packs that all kind of have the same theme and color palette. So this kind of like a vintage paper, graph paper. So I'm applying that down. And then when I folded the card, half of it would kind of pop up. So I put a fold in the tape once I folded the card over and made sure that it's nice and secure. And it added just like another vintage element to this composition. And then just nip off the edges and that all look great. Here's a map themed printed washy tape. And so I'm doing the same thing, snipping off the edges and we're good. So lightening them up even more. Gosh, I was this is the back, of course. So I wanted to tone down the back so that it was clear which side was the front and which side was the back. So I made the backs a little bit more washed out. And you can do that with either the brown or white. Or maybe you have Teal or green. You can use any color you want. And it's also kind of boring the edges of my quotes. So making those a little bit more rugged. So here's the finished pieces. I love how they turned out and here's some close ups for you. I really enjoy all of the textures and the sentiment in these. They're a little bit unusual, little bit quirky. And I think the right people will really appreciate them. So I hope you had fun joining me for this class. How fun making these cards. I can't wait to see what you come up with. Thank you so much for joining me for this class. I had a blast making cards with you. I would love to see your projects. So if you'd like to share it or would like some feedback, I encourage you to post a picture in the project gallery and let me know about your experience. If you enjoyed this class, consider following me for future updates on classes that I offer. I also have several other painting classes ready for you now, which you can view in my main class page, which is linked to below. And remember artists meant to be fun. So if you show up and practice with an open mind, you'll learn something new every time. Happy card making much love. Yeah.