Last week it was my Dad’s birthday, which I had a chance to celebrate with everyone back home. As always, I designed and created a birthday card for him. I’ve been trying to experiment with different media and techniques lately, after mainly making quilled cards for years. I had previously attempted to paint some cards with watercolours, with varying degrees of success, and this time, I decided to try to make one with acrylics. Here’s how it went!

Coming up with a design

First of all, I had to come up with a design for the card. I always find designing cards for my Dad one of the hardest. All other members of my close family are women, and it’s easy for me to make cute floral cards for them. But for my Dad, I always try to create a more “manly” design.

This time, I was inspired by my Dad’s favourite car, the Volkswagen Golf. In fact, my parents have just got a new one, after previously owning two of the older models. They weren’t supposed to get the new car until Easter, but it ended up arriving a week before my Dad’s birthday, which was perfect timing.

Creating the sketch

I found some reference images online and decided to go for the front view of the car. To make the picture more birthday-like, I decided to add some balloons attached to the car’s mirrors.

I sketched the initial idea by hand and then used a light box to copy it to another piece of paper, this time focusing on making the design more symmetrical and cleaner. Then, I used the light box again to draw a sketch of the final design on the card.

The licence plate in the design isn’t random – it has a format similar to licence plates in my hometown, and includes the date of my Dad’s birthday and current year.

Starting to paint

I didn’t use a pre-made card blank, but instead used a sheet of acrylic paper and folded it in half. The paper was thick and had a bit of a ribbed texture, and felt like good quality. Technically, you can paint with acrylics on any thick paper, but it made sense to use specialised paper since I already had it sitting in my drawer.

I started painting the card by tracing the black details – the logo, the licence plate, the lights and the wheels.

Next, I painted the windscreen, using blue paints. I also painted the lights in various shades of yellow.

Playing with metallic paints

Then, I needed to figure out how to paint the car’s body, knowing that my parents’ new car would be dark silver.

A simple option would have been to paint the car grey, but I had a different idea. I found a tube of iridescent silver paint. It was very bright – almost white – but included some metallic particles. The paint itself was too light to use it on its own, but I mixed it with plain black paint and created a metallic shade of grey. Pictures don’t do it justice, but the car looks silver-grey from the front and reflects the light if you look at it at an angle.

Finished card

Finally, I completed all of the small details and added a few colourful balloons on each side of the car, attached to the mirrors. I used a permanent marker pen to draw the strings on the balloons, as it was more accurate than trying to use black paint and a brush.

For my first attempt at creating a DIY card with acrylic paints, I think it went really well! I’m really happy with the design itself, and the execution wasn’t bad either, I hope. The coat on the car, painted with metallic grey, adds a nice touch and makes it look more like a real car. It was a great coincidence that my parents received their new car ahead of schedule, and right before my Dad’s birthday.

I have further ideas for DIY cards painted with acrylics, so watch this space! Some of my other family members will be receiving those later this year.

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