Teacher Appreciation thank you card

Hello everyone! Are we all well?

Did you know that Teacher Appreciation Week is a thing?! Well, you do now!

I didn’t actually know of it until now. My children and I have experienced several schools over the years and therefore, many teaching staff due to home moves, progression into secondary school etc and we always try to really show our appreciation of the staff we’ve encountered along the way. A teacher can be a confidante, a role model or a feeling of warmth and safety. We send cards at every opportunity and they typically go down well.

Kate has several packs available suitable for the occasion. I chose ‘In My Backpack‘ for this card. I’ll talk you through my process for making this teacher thank you card:

The first thing I did was print the ‘Paint Splat’. I had in mind that I’d be using a UK A6 card, therefore I wanted a panel a few mm smaller than that. This translates into approximately 1/4 of a UK A4 sheet of card so I size with this in mind.

Once printed, I measure what size I need the card panel to be and draw this guide onto the panel, ensuring space around the image is equal (of course, I wouldn’t normally do this with a thick red pen – this was for demonstration purposes!)

I start by colouring the word ‘paint’. Everyone has their own way of laying down colour and blending. Mine is as follows and provides me with the best results:

First, I lay down my Lightest shade. Here, it is R14. This gives a wet base for any following applications to move freely on. (I suppose it’s a tad like a watercolour technique whereby many artists lay down water onto their image before adding any colour). Then, I add my darkest shade where required. Here, it is R59. Like so:

2. Then, I pull the darkest shade out with my medium shade. Here it is R27. Like so:

3. Finally, I go back in and over the previous 2 shades with my lightest shade again, R14.

For the main body of the paint tube, I used my Copics in W00, W0, W2, W4. Similarly to the previous steps, I coloured the whole tube in the lightest shade (W00), then applied small flicks of the darkest shade (W4) for where I wanted darker areas, blended these out slightly with a shade lighter than this (W2) and then blended this further out with the 2nd lightest (W0). My thought process was to add shade where there would be folds and creases in the tube. It resulted in a tube that looked quite ‘old and well used’! So, not quite the plan! Hehe! But, there are no rules to colouring. Well, just one – enjoy it!

I added a sneaky bit of silver metallic pen to the thread of the tube – I always try to sneak in a bit of sparkle or shimmer when I can get away with it!

I coloured the Brush handle: E35, E57, E25. Bristles: E23, E43. For the handle, I centred the darkest shade, with the medium shade blending that out and then the lightest shade around the edges.

I went over the image outlines with colour a few times too often for my liking with the brush. However, I don’t panic when this happens. I simply go over the parts I want to ‘disappear’ (!) with my trusty white gel pen. I’ll be honest, sometimes, this can be fairly noticeable, particularly where no fussy cutting of the image is to follow. However, I find once an image is fussy cut, this white cover up becomes less noticeable.

I fussy cut my images out and keeping with the theme of my white gel pen, I went in and added some highlights.

TOP TIP:

I am a glutton for losing parts to projects and spend hours pulling my hair out and turning the air blue searching for them! Now, I use a small container when working on projects with many components to store them whilst working on other parts of the project.

I mounted this panel onto a piece of black card several mm larger round each edge using wet adhesive. Then, coloured the ‘Splat’ in B12, B14 and B16. B12 is the main, lightest of the shades. I went in with B16 to add some darker areas in the corners and blended this out using B14. I blended this back into the B12 so there were no harsh lines.

I then went in with my white gel pen to add some highlights and some more subtle highlights using a white pencil.

Now, I coloured all the additional components using these colours: Palette: W0, W00, W2, W4. Palette colours: E57, C0, W9, RV13, V09, G07, Y08, YR16. Then, I pieced the card together.

TOP TIP

Before applying adhesive and making anything final, I like to lay out all components and take a picture of the placement I am happy with. Then, I refer to said picture when finalising it all with adhesive.