Playing Card People: Crafting Fun Figures in 10 Minutes or Less

1. Welcome to Playing Card People: Hi, friends. Welcome to another Zoe's Zap classes. These are short and sweet classes meant to inspire, teach and demonstrate fun art ideas and projects succinctly. In this playing card people class, we are going to cut up playing cards. Yes, you heard me right. We're going to turn them into mini pieces of art in the form of people. I love a good upcycling art project, and I promise this one is a royal flush. Making playing card people is a fun, fast and easy activity that looks interesting and complex. You could easily make a playing card person in under 10 minutes. Remember, you can make these people for the joy of just making art, or you can turn them into other things hanging tags, gift tags, cards, bookmarks, magnets. Ornaments There is no limit to how you can use your playing card people. Often people have playing card decks lying around that are missing a few cards, and this is the perfect activity for those decks. Additionally, playing cards are not that expensive, so you can actually buy a playing deck for the sole purpose of cutting it up and making it into people. And don't feel bad about that. I know you're thinking, am I allowed to cut up playing cards, and here's a secret? Yes, you are because look how eye catching and great they become when they become a mini piece of art. I particularly like this art project because it's art with a lot of permission to be corky, out of proportion. Unconventional, wacky, weird. In fact, the more off the wall, the better. Repurposing playing cards is a fun, crafty activity that literally any age, any skill, any person can do. I know you're gonna want to get started making your playing card person right away. So let's get to it. Who's in? 2. Supplies And Techniques: Let's go over supplies and techniques. The most important item is playing cards. Old or new, any size, any genre. If you don't have cards, paint SWAT or index card can work, too. Next is how exactly are you going to attach your parts together? My go to is paper fasteners, brass brads that come in colorful sizes and shapes. I like the mini ones. You can use staples, Needle and thread and wire, tape and glue are great, too. If you use glue, try rubbing the playing cards with an emery board or sandpaper before applying the glue so that they have better sticking power. Since those cards are covered in a laminate, it's harder for them to stick to each other. Scissors and exacto knives. Scissors with interesting edges can be fun, too. Cole punchers for the fasteners, yarn, string, ribbon, buttons, beads, stickers, decals, sparkles, letters, magnets and paper clips and clothes pins for the backside can be used. Distressing ink to age the cards, markers pens, gel pens to add any details. The number one takeaway for techniques and supplies for this class is that it can be fast, fun, and easy with just the variety of a few cards. A hole puncher, scissors, and the metal fasteners, a person can be made in minutes. Check this out. By using the existing head of the jack and cutting it along with a half of a torso and then cutting the pelvis and legs with the ten of hearts. I've started a person. If I cut one leg in half, I can create a knee and add some movement. Add a uniquely shaped foot in the same manner and booi. If you don't like the back of the fastener peeking out, you can always just bend those tabs backwards. I can use the Queen's body to give my person a longer torso. Next comes arms, and I can poke around with the scraps I have already made and use those for my arms. Again, I use the whole puncher and fasteners to make a joint like an elbow. Always keep in mind that elements do not need to match or make sense. In fact, the quirkier the better. How fast did I create this person? And I didn't even do anything too wild besides cut out some geometric pieces and fasten them together. Get as elaborate as you want with cutting, shapes, decorations and add ons. In the next video, I will go over a whole slew of inspiring ways to approach your playing card people from head to toe. 3. From Head To Toe: Let's get started from head to toe. You can cut out a head using a scissors and the obvious, the head of one of the face cards, a royal or the Joker. Leave a neck and leave a bit at the top. This can be used to add a string at the end to make it a hanging tag of sorts. The neck tab can be used to attach the neck and head to the body. Here's an abstract face or cut out a photo of a loved one and add that or a magazine or your own illustration. A pet face could be fun, too. The body. This can be rectangle, half a rectangle, other shapes entirely. The body of your royal images from magazines, proportions do not matter with this project. A size big or small in scale, all works. If you don't have cards, find other items. Look at these paint swatches used as the body. The limbs. You can always use the hands of the existing royal characters. Cut them out and leave a little tab. Then by using a small hole puncher, you can create the hole where a hand can attach to an arm with the metal class. Or just attach the whole forearm with the hand. You can make forms, curved arms, calves, thighs, all the parts. Using magazine cutouts works for limbs, too. You can also make your own hands and feet and be as creative as you want. You can make shoes by using basic shapes as shoes or parts of the card design. Let's talk about clothing and other embellishments. Using yarn for hair is a really fun way to add a three dimensional touch. I mentioned that if you're going to glue onto a playing card, it's a good idea to sand it first because of the texture on the cards. You want to make sure that the glue and the yarn can really stick and hold on your playing card. You can see that little tab for the neck attached with a staple. Here's an example of wire and beads used for the legs and thread and ribbon used for the legs and a bead as the foot, the feet, ribbon for the skirt, some funky feet and decals and sparkles throughout. Here's another skirt made from slices of cards with a belt, rope as arms, funky hands, and a button at the belly button. One more skirt made from slices with some lace at the bottom as a nice trim, and some funky pantaloons made out of cards cut with a funky scissors. It's fun to use needle and thread and do some stitching on your cards or in this case, the paint swatch to get another texture into the playing card person. I used magazine hair cut out and added to that person. And here's a dog. It's just as much fun making animals as it is people. By adding a magnet to the back of this person and two signs that say clean and dirty, I was able to make a magnet for my dishwasher to know when the dishes were clean and when they were dirty. It's a lot of fun to just focus on a face when you're doing these people. You can use all the elements of the card to decorate this person, attach it to a greeting card, and suddenly you have something really homemade and special to give to somebody. A bookmark is an easy card trick. Just add a tassel, some collage, and you can use it or give it as a gift. I also want to share that this is one of my favorite activities. I've mentioned how much I love doing projects out of recycled pieces or upcycling elements, and this is one of those projects. But for this one, I really love the process even more than the final product, that's unusual sometimes because people usually do art for the final product. But this time, I love leaning into the process. You really get into being super creative and unstructured when it comes to making people and bodies and it's liberating not to have to be so specific. I encourage you to let go. I encourage you to invite some friends over to do this. The supply list is really easy to come up with, and it's a great activity. Playing card people. 4. Share The Love: I'd love to see what you came up with with your playing card people or pets. I'm especially curious if you use something other than playing cards, like cards from a different game or a different activity or board game or anything. I'm curious. And I'd love to see if you added things like yarn, sparkles, ribbons, please share your projects in the project section of this class.