24Steps Art and Design

To create a personalised gift card design first you have to get to know what the recipient likes or would appreciate and it helps to have a reason to send the card…. Customized gift cards are very popular online as they take card designs and make them personal to the receiver.  It helps you feel like you’re giving something you had a hand in making.  Going one step further there’s nothing better than giving a handmade gift and here art journaling excels because it provides the opportunity to be really creative knowing you will bring a smile to someone’s face.

Mother’s Day Gift Card Design

Rather than making a generic gift card design for Mother’s day this year I thought it would be nice to make a card that showcased something my mum likes. A couple years ago I designed a series of animal Mother’s day cards in my art journal and here they are on the shop. I loved them but this year it felt like a different approach was needed. So I had a think and came up with a whole list, including:

• sewing machines
• fabrics
• spiders
• trees
• wildlife
• plants
• some tv programs

So far so good but I couldn’t put All that even in a personalised gift card design. It had to be narrowed down.

Nature in Spring

I settled on nature as a theme for the card design which meant the Season could point me to what to include. At the moment in their garden they have birds singing, trees coming in to leaf, celandines popping up everywhere and for the first time since they set up a pond they have tadpoles. The tadpoles have caused great excitement this year so it was a no brainer to include them in plans for the card. I decided to work with celandines, tadpoles and goldfinches although the goldfinches did not make it into the final art journal gift card design.

Gift Card Design Thumbnails

Before starting on the art journal page I scribbled down some page layout ideas in my sketchbook. Here they are:

Art Journal Gift Card Design

With my basic design prepared I selected some art journaling supplies:

• Reeves water soluble crayons
• Stencil
• Neocolour Aquarelle crayons
• Acrylic paints

First I divided the page in to 2 section then i added greens and yellows to the larger part and blues to the smaller. I added a strip of Washi tape between the two sides. Then I started stencilling to create texture in the background. When dry I added the outlines of my art journal card design and then painted around these to knock back the background. Watersoluble crayons added some colour to my imagery but because of their translucency I retained the background texture from before.

Art Journal Process

Here is a video of the art journal process of making this gift card design.

Final Personalised Gift Card Design Print

Here are some more Mother’s day gift ideas that are a bit unusual. I hope this has inspired you to personalise some of your art journal pages for loved ones and make some fun gift cards designs you can give with pride. Hugs, Ceri xx



Tagged as: Tags card, creativity, mixed media, mothers day, wildlife art