About leveraging your original art to make new original art

 I completed my Artist Trading Cards that I will be taking for trade on an art retreat adventure. 

I could not pass up the chance to show and tell with a tutorial on how and why I decided to leverage a piece of my own art to get the job done.

So first of all, there was the issue that I need a whole bunch of cards to trade 

and

not a whole bunch of time to make them

and

I wanted to trade all original cards.

I started exploring my options and brainstorming ideas when I painted Catrina in my Journal.

My thinking was by using floral napkins, I could speed up the process.

During the journal page session, an inspiration bomb hit me. 

I had the perfect piece of original art with lots of flowers painted by me and 5 faces to work with. 

That excited me!

 I opened the above photo in Photoshop Elements.

First thing, I made duplicates of this image to crop from and closed the original image.

I cropped the faces in proportional 2.5" x 3.5" sizes.

Using the five faces and cropping some pairs of faces, I ended up with 9 crops. 

In Photoshop Elements, from the File menu, I set up a → New →Blank File

for 8.5" x 11" document.

Then I drug the 9 crops onto the new document as shown above. 

From the PS menu bar → View and select →rulers and grid.

The crops are in the right proportion; however, each may be a different size when you drag it to the blank document. 

Grab the corner of the crop and stretch or shrink using the rulers and grid to get them exactly 2.5" x 3.5" and arranged on the document.

The above photo shows my layout ready to print.

I print the "actual size" document from PS print function.

I printed on Epson Ultra Premium Presentation Paper (Matte).

You can get this paper at some office supply stores.

But I have printed on watercolor paper from a pad of such paper. 

Because I was in experimental mode that day: 

I printed one sheet using my Epson R2400 which is an ink-jet.

and

I printed one sheet on my HP ColorLaser Jet. 

I was curious to see if there would be any difference. 

There is none. 

Before cutting the cards from the sheet, I brushed on a layer of Golden Matte Medium #R3530. 

Seal with what ever you like to use. 

From left to right the above photo shows the unpainted card cropped from the original piece of art, one version from the laser sheet and one version from the ink jet sheet. 

I got the job done.

It was much fun.

But still took a fair amount of time. I could have gone on and on embellishing their faces. 

I ended up with a stack of original ATCards each one different.

I hope you enjoyed this and if you give it a try, please come back and tell us so we can go see.

♥