As much as I LOVE to repurpose original art to create my illustrations, I also want to make my own art and so I started playing around with shapes and colors and so today, I’m sharing 2 collections of original art made by me! YAY!
What I plan to do is use these for handmade cards, I can print these out in whatever size card I want to make and then stamp a sentiment, embellish it with die cuts or just do a CAS (clean and simple) card design with just the image and a wonderful sentiment. I’m only limited by my imagination! So, I’ve sectioned this post off by the 2 different collections and I hope you enjoy looking and reading my take on each piece!
Modern Art Collection
This collection is my dream of playing with basic shapes. I love doing this to make art, it’s easy and it’s relaxing. Many times I’ve gone into offices and loved seeing modern abstract art on the walls with just a mix of circles, squares, lines, etc.
Modern Squares
This piece showcases various square shapes in different neutral colors and some I overlapped onto other squares and some I bled off the edge. The background is this light grayish green color that is pleasing to the eye.
I also made some squares blend by changing the opacity of the lines to make them interwine, it makes the piece look like little windows.
Abstract Shaping
I love this simple illustration that I did by digital watercoloring and a drawing pencil in my software program. I changed the size of my brush to create this large stroke. This greenish teal color is a favorite!
Abstract art has many interpretations. Shapes are great for this art category. I think this piece will be terrific as the background with a stamped sentiment on top.
Circles & Arches
Combining circles with an overlap of color and adding them to an arch is just so peaceful to me. After I made the circles, I drew nested arches and if you’ve followed my cardmaking posts, you know how much I love arches.
And, I purposefully made my arches to look a little wonky for a whimiscal look.
Boho Collection
I love the colorways of bohemian fashion and it was the inspiration for this collection. I’ve always loved fashion especially where the colors are on the neutral side of the color wheel.
Boho Rainbows Set of 3
I went with a background color for all the pieces which is a mixture of maueve, brown and red. I played around with the accent colors to see how they would blend. It’s kinda of rainbow mix plus I drew black lines around some circles.
To use these on cards, I have a couple of choices: (1) I could stamp a sentiment in Versamark ink (watermark ink), use white embossing powder and heat set the sentiment; or (2) I could die cut a sentiment that has a shadow die or even use a rub-on transfer sentiment on white cardstock, trim it out and adhere it on top of these illustrations. I love the choices!
Boho Rainbow #1
This illustration is a spin-off on that Circle/Rainbow piece from Modern Art Collection but this time the rainbows has various colors. I love the fact that you can take 1 design and turn it onto many.
It’s simple, but it tells the story to me of God’s promise to never destroy the earth by flood again (Genesis 9:11).
Boho Rainbow #2
This is the second piece where I used the same colors but I drew different rainbow shapes and duplicated the design, flipped it in the opposite direction.
I left a lot of center whitespace which is perfect for a sentiment.
What I love about both these collections is I accomplished something I wanted to do which was to draw my own illustrations. And I don’t necessarily have to use them as backgrounds for cards, I can fussy cut these shapes, pair them with pattern papers or create my own backgrounds with stencils and ink blending or using my gel press. I can also blend them with floral/greenery die sets.
If you’re interested, check out my 3 posts, “Boho-Abstract” cards that I made in 2022. I made a bunch of cards using many of these colors with my gel press, greenery die cuts and even 3D foiled butterfly stickers I bought at Dollar Tree. The sentiments are encouraging, I loved making all those cards. Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here.
I’m so pumped up to make more illustrations and once I turn these into cards, you’ll see them posted here so be sure you’re following me! You can subscribe to my blog on the sidebar and you can follow me on social media from the bottom of this page! Thanks for Reading!
