Purposeful or Functional Art: Personalized Greeting Cards- Part 3

Just wanted to share a few more digital illustrations in a third part. These days my functional art has been to illustrate ideas for my blogs.  
HeArtfully Creating,
Anita

In black and white - illustration by Anita Berglund

Coloured - illustration by Anita Berglund

In black and white - illustration by Anita Berglund

 illustration by Anita Berglund

Add caption

illustration by Anita Berglund

illustration by Anita Berglund

In black and white - illustration by Anita Berglund

In black and white - illustration by Anita Berglund

In black and white - illustration by Anita Berglund

 - illustration by Anita Berglund

- illustration by Anita Berglund

- illustration by Anita Berglund

illustration by Anita Berglund

Purposeful or Functional Art: Personalized Greeting "Cards"- Part 2

A Work in progress, not complete. Illustration by Anita Berglund

Okay, I shared just a few examples of the original greeting cards I made years ago using traditional methods. Remember paper, pencils and markers! These days I have bee using my computer to draw and paint images. Something that I started out doing for fun was to take photos of friends and family and open the photo up into a drawing/painting app like Sketchbook Express. And then....I just embellished a lot! Adding costumes and backgrounds. So you can see some of the process I  am posting a series of before, during and to the finished result images.
Print Anywhere!?
What is great about digitalizing your work by drawing digital or scanning your work into a jpeg file, you can email your personalized, original art work to the recipients. And they can do what they want with it including making it wallpaper on their computer, print it out in whatever size it can be. If you go to printing web sites you will see original images on t-shirts, mugs, posters, calendars, pins, pretty much anything you can print on.  That is something you might want to consider if you want to make gift that way.
Have Fun!
When you create heArtfully, you are enjoying, even loving what you are doing and that means it won't feel like a chore. As well people care if you take time to create something personalized just for them. So if you don't already make your own cards and gifts, I encourage you to.
Time To Share...

This is a compilation of faces from photos of family members- Illustration by Anita Berglund

Family members of ours who went from this...

To this...

To This...

To the final result, this! Illustration by Anita Berglund

Here are my parents before...

Add caption Illustration by Anita Berglund

Mom and Dad again...I collaged a pile of old photos and had some fun....

Here Was the final result! Illustration by Anita Berglund

Wanting it to be perfect, I was happy that it turned out pretty good. Always room to perfect! Illustration by Anita Berglund

Here is the before process....Illustration by Anita Berglund

Purposeful or Functional Art: Personalized Greeting Cards- Part 1

We can make art to hang on your wall or display like a sculpture but some of us like to use our art making ability to create what I call "practical art" or functional art. Meaning art that can be used for something, purposeful...useable art.
Since I have been focusing on working in polymer clay these days, examples of purposeful polymer clay art could be.... candle holders, decorate a vase, provide a grip for tools like crochet hooks, polymer clay tools, decorate and glass, metal or wooden surface that holds balms, solid perfumes, do-dads and the like.

Using artwork to explain or teach something

And then two dimensionally speaking, to me, practical or purposeful art could be anything that is created to be used for something more than looking at in an Art gallery or on your walls. Examples I have used my 2D art have been for uses like illustrating story books to help tell stories or to teach someone how to do something like the tutorials I drew on the left. As well, in order to waterproof my husband's wheelchair tote bag, so I painted a landscape across the bottom, check it out below.

My husband's functional art by me!

And then there are the times when I have decorated useful items like picture frames and personalizing a jewelry box! The possibilities have been endless...drawings for advertisements to be used in print media like a newspaper, church bulletins, logo design, drawing images for posters and other advertising methods and all that fun stuff
Let's Get Personal
I think you get the idea. Today, I want to talk about making personalized, one of a kind greeting cards. Sure anyone can buy a card from Hallmark, but when you create your own special occasion or just because card to celebrate someone, there will never be another one like it anywhere! I do confess that my motive over the decades, besides having fun, has also been to save money. Have you seen the price of those store bought cards?!

There are a bazillion tutorials out here in web world about card making. There are many who like to work in scrapbooking mode, i.e.: stamping and inks,  paper cutouts, glitters, embossing powders, stickers and such. All fun but for me, I want to share the Old fashioned" way my personalized cards were made, using card stock, pencils and markers, along with glitter glue!

This is called part one because paper and markers were the original way many of us made cards and many still prefer that way.
So check out samples of a few of countless personalized and generic hand drawn cards that I once did with great joy!

A drawing I did in clay to make a texture plate!

These days, my personal cards can be done digitally, Check out the original article "Drawing With A Mouse" to see the first article on the subject.  For now, here are some past functional art pieces. Be inspired. We'll see you in part 2 next time!