How to Make a Fairy Cat Collage Art Trading Card

I love making art trading cards. They are very popular these days with artists and collectors alike. Art trading cards, or ATC's, are tiny works of art the size of a standard baseball card. In this article, I will show you how to make a fun fairy cat collage in ATC size.

To make an art trading card, you will need a base to work on. The standard size of an art trading card is 3.5 by 2.5 inches. You can use any type of base you like, whether it be watercolor paper, card stock, wood, polymer clay, or any other type of material that is sturdy enough to hold your creation.

You can use any type of art medium to create your mini art card as well. You can paint it with acrylic, oils, or watercolor, you can decorate with polymer clay, beads, or charms. I've seen holes punched through cards, to allow for a hanger or different types of dangles. You can create your card in three dimensions, or make it flat.

For this project, you will be using collage materials and images, art pens, glitter and paint. On collages ATC size, I like to use watercolor paper as the base. I used to use card stock, but I found that eventually the images,especially if they are clipped from magazines, will start to peal off at the corners.

To make your collage, you will need collage materials. For me, this consists of clippings from magazines, books, junk mail, and any other paper source I can get a hold of. I do a lot of collages, so I have, over the years, collected thousands of clippings, and I sort them according to image. I also have a good stock of clipped words, letters, phrases, designs. Pretty much anything that catches my eye, that I think I might use in a collage at some point.

If you do not already have a collection of images to choose from, you will need to search through magazines and books for certain elements needed for your art card collage. You will need the image of a cat, and butterfly wings that when glued onto the card, will fit nicely on the cat's back. You will also need a background. The background can be anything you like, as long as it doesn't detract from the cat or it's wings. A black cat with blue wings on a brown or yellow background is the right kind of idea.

The background can have subtle designs, or be just a solid color. When looking for a background, measure it against the card to see if it will fit. Then, turn the piece of background paper over, the side you want to use face down. Saturate one side of your watercolor card with glue. Mod podge is good to use for collages. Lay the watercolor card, glue side down, onto the back of your background image, in a matter so the entire card will be covered with the image. Let this sit for an hour or two to dry.

When the glue is dry, clip off the edges of the background, flush with the sides of the card. Now you can glue on the cat and the wings. What I like to do is glue the cat on first, and while the glue is still wet, slip the wings slightly behind the cat's back. You can add embellishments now, like cut out ward or phrases in the background, glitter on the wings, and do any writing on the card, or outlining the wings with a black art pen to make them stand out.

Let your art work dry, and you're finished creating your fairy cat art trading card collage!