Personalized Cards: Tell Your Story

1. Introduction: Were you ever assigned with creating a card for Mother's Day in your school? And did you include little illustrations of the things that she liked or hobbies that she had? Or perhaps you're also the kind of friend who made special little cards for your friends on their birthdays and other special occasions. And I don't know about you, but I kind of stopped doing that a while ago. But with everything becoming more digital from greeting cards to books, I find myself missing more tangible handmade things. And I kind of want to go back to making those. Would you join me in it? Hi, my name is Winta and I'm an architect and visual artist who's based in Adisa Ethiopia. I've worked on different kinds of visual projects over the years, including sand animation videos for TV stations like ABS and ALAN TV, two D videos and illustrations for different organizations, and I've also done graphic recordings for organizations like the Packard Foundation and the World Research Institute. I've also carried out visual thinking workshops to help different groups of people from young children to hotel managers communicate their ideas more effectively and brainstorm together. Here, I just want to talk about communicating gratitude and your best wishes to your loved ones using a simple card which has an illustration in the front and a little note inside. I've been making a Christmas card this time around. And here in Ethiopia, Christmas is called Genna, and it's an occasion where people throw grass all over the living room and kitchen and gather around a coffee making ceremony. So I'll be drawing a Jevana which is where the coffee boils and a cup of coffee beside it, along with some grass to kind of show that festivity vibe. But please feel free to draw anything of personal or cultural significance to the person who you'll be giving this card to just to make it extra custom and special. But if you're short on time, you can also use one of the customizable designs that I've included in my digital products section, and you can add the name and special letter that you want to write to your loved one. Next, we'll be talking about the materials that we'll be using for making this simple card, and I'll see you there. 2. Materials + Class Project: Oh so the materials I want to use for making this greeting card are this card stock paper that I got from Walmart. And I'll be folding this in half. I'll be using alcohol markers. So I'll be using the huh markers and HPO marker because I really like the shade of green and a pen for line art and for writing down my letter. And I'll also be using my phone where I suggest using a notes app for writing down a draft of your letter ahead of time because it would make it easier when you come down to writing it. So let's start making the greeting card. 3. Step-by-step Tutorial: All right. So I'm going to be starting with folding this paper in half, just to make it easier for me to know exactly how much space I have for creating the illustration on the front. So you can use a I'll just be using this actually for flattening this out. It doesn't matter. So once I have this A five sheet, I'm going to be going right into it with my marker. Yeah, I'm not going to do any line art or anything because I already have an idea of what I want. But if you want to look up a few images on Pinterest or on Google, just to have a better idea of what you want to draw or what design you want it to have, then you can go for that. But I'll be drawing Jamna, so it's going to take up around this much space. And I'm going to be starting with the neck. So I want to draw it slightly tilted. Alcohol markers are very forgiving. So even if I make a mistake, I can just draw over it or around it. So I'll be going like this. And like this, I'll start with the very basic shapes and I'll be drawing some kind of circular form like this around it. And I want to draw. This is the nozzle or this is the part where the coffee comes out from. So I'll be drawing that right here, and then I'll be drawing, like, the opening right here where we have usually people cover this part, but I guess I want to keep this open. Yeah, I want to keep this open. And then I want to draw the handle. This is what people use to hold the jabona itself. So this would be the handle. And this is it. This is the basic outline of our jabona. And so now I'm going to start adding the pattern, the decoration that it would have. And then I would just color it in. I want to work quickly and darken one side more than the other. So I think I want to darken, actually this side, my right side. The lady I mentioned in my greeting card just called. That's quite funny. Oh, maybe I should have used the shield here just to prevent any leaking. And probably just add that now because we don't want to play we don't want to take any risks, you know. Okay. So I think this is enough for the javena. So I want to add my cup right here now. Yeah, I want to use one with a finer tip. So I'm gonna just w out. This one is my Nolan fine one flex pen. The pigment is not as strong as I'd like it to be, but I want to draw a very simple cup. So this is kind of the basic shape of it. And then there's, like, and I want to draw like a platter, keeping everything very simple, just to just to the basic shapes of it. And then I kind of want to draw like the smoke that comes out of the gemina and maybe also out of the nozzle and then kind of emphasize the decoration here. I also want to kind of add, like, some line art just to give this some definition. I like adding, whatever I add in art, I like to leave some spaces, like, some parts untouched, just so that. I don't know. I feel like it makes it feel like it's the illustration breathes better. I don't know, just to describe it. And I want to have, like, some smoke illustrations. I want to keep this very playful, very simple. And then I'm going to add my decoration here. So there'd be like a little yellow here and here. And then I want to add a little green here because cups are quite decorated, usually, and I like that. I want to have that same vibe here. And I want to make it look like there's actually coffee here. So let me add some coffee inside and make it look like there's coffee pouring and then also splattering. And finally, actually, maybe I'll also add, like, a little bit of gray just to let me see how this looks. I want to keep colors to a minimum. I want to add shading, whatever I think it would add a little bit of dimension to the illustration. Okay. So now I want to write down Merry Christmas or happy Genna. So which one should I write? Happy Genna MelcomGenna. But if I write that, then it has to be an Ahoric. So maybe I'll just write Merry Christmas. Yeah. Try to keep all of my writing in the center or, like, towards the center. And if there's any space on either side, then I'll be filling it up with illustrations or whatever decorative elements that I want to add to my card. And I try to keep things legible. So for me, legibility is the most important thing whenever you do anything handwritten. I love the cursive writing that I see sometimes, but I feel like a lot of people don't really know how to do, including myself. I don't really know how to write in cursive very, very well. So I just stick to my mostly blocky letters, but also add a little flair to it. But legibility is quite important to me. So Mary. And then since Christmas has more words, I'm going to keep the letters smaller. I can keep that. And then I'm going to be adding some grass effect. So this is the grass represents the grass that you would see and a little bit here. This is some of the L, usually people have a lot of grass. All over the living room floor. Maybe I'll add a little more here actually. This is risky, but let me just try because I feel like this is kind of empty over here. And I love the tumbo brush for this strokes are very expressive. But I want to add a little smoke here 'cause I feel like this section is quite empty, working as I go. And also some smoke here. And maybe a little more grass here. Right. And I want to embellish this just a little bit, the writing. So I'm just writing around the around the alphabets, just to make them more expressive. And this is something I figure out along the way, because sometimes I feel like it's too empty, sometimes I feel like I need to add a little more a little more doodles here and there, just to make it more fun, more expressive cause you're doing this for one person. You know, it's the cooler, more expressive, cuter, I think, the better. So going to add the same thing around the Javina and cup, maybe even on the inside because I feel like the Javina looks a little too flat for my liking. This would be my Christmas card for a friend, and I'll be writing something on the inside right here. So it could be something that I have already written down on my notes app or something that I would just stream of consciousness, just start writing. I'll just do something from now. You can sign off your letter, and you can even add, a little bit of something that you had in the previous page, like the similar motif. And this is how I make greeting cards for my loved ones. I hope that you took a few ideas or tips from here and that you use this in whatever cards you make in the future. You can take a picture of the front here and upload it so that we could see what you made for your friend or loved one, and I see next lesson. 4. Closing: Congratulations. You have a greeting card ready to send your loved one, custom made specially for them. I love the reactions that I get just from making this simple thing. But as a reminder, if you're in a bit of a rush, you can also use one of the customizable designs that I have in my digital products section. And if you have created this greeting card, you don't have to take a picture of the letter. You can just take a picture of the front of your greeting card and upload it in a class project section. I would love to see the design that you've made. You could connect with me on Instagram, LinkedIn through the social media links that I provided in the description box below, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and beyond. Take care.