beelikej | Artproject: New Year's Cards 2016/2017 (Reply)

Now that Easter eggs have shown up in the office's candy bowls (WTF?), I figured it was time to finally clean up my Christmas (and Birthday) decorations... which reminded me I was going to post a Making Of of my New Year's cards. I hope all of them have arrived now, so this post is spoiler-free;) If you didn't get a card, consider this my best wishes for 2017, we all still need those, right? *hugs everyone tight*

I really wanted J3 to be a part of my card, so I started by putting them together (there's a bonus GIF of the photoshop manipping at the end;) The papercut idea I had in my head turned out to be too complicated, so I had to experiment a little with how to feature the guys.
I had seen a card with a zero flipping around and I wanted to build on that design, so I got a piece of paper and tested sizes en folding options. I didn't make photos of that process, but you can see the result in the first photo:

The red card is my fiddle fold, a rough set up of the idea. The white paper is the final digital version I made in Illustrator. I meant to cut the guys' shapes out of paper, but that turned out to be too complicated with too many details for the amount of cards I wanted to make.
While I was thinking about other ways to portray them, I moved along with the rest of the card.

The first test cut: this paper is purple on one side and white on the other, which creates a lovely effect.

Playing with markers to test the addition of another colour.

Because I can't write on the glossy purple side, I try to find a different solution to add text.
The printed purple cracks when folded, so I choose a glittering white paper instead and plan to find a way to add colour later. I make another effort to visualize J3, but am not happy with the result.

Frustrated with the guys, I play with silhouettes shapes. It's fun to try and make them kiss, but I can't figure out the perfect fold for it to work and I still need to add colour and I'm running out of time... PANIC!

Then I finally get the right brainwave on how to add the guys AND colour: if I make one extra cut, I can attach a coloured cut out!
Plus this way I can also use the base for my not-fandom family, because I can simply stick in a rectangle piece with just text for their edition.

Finally happy with the execution, I make a plastic cover/mask to help cut all the cards; this way I can cut about three at the same time

I still have to do individual adjustments, but it works a lot faster than one at the time *grins*
After that, it's just a matter of shoving in a print-out of the guys and writing Gelukkig Nieuwjaar (Happy New Year!)

Here's a rough step by step of how I made Jeff snuggle up to Jensen and Jared.

The End.

With this art-project rounded up, I can really start to focus on extra artwork for the Reverse Bang. My darling author