Create Custom Postcards From Your Artwork

Here is a little secret: I upcycle the Dumpling’s old artwork all the time — either using them as raw material in new projects or digitally giving them second lives.

Remember the geometric tape resist animals from last summer? I framed the originals in her room and turned the digital copies into postcards using PowerPoint and printing on heavy card stock.

I shared my PowerPoint template and instructions of how I created the postcards below:

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Take a picture of the artwork with your phone

Take pictures of the pieces (it can be anything, not just paintings) you would like to use with your phone, email, and save them to your desktop. Alternatively, scan the images and save them as high resolution (300 dpi) JPGs. I prefer the first method because I can make basic touch-ups (adjust brightness, color saturation, etc.) on my phone’s photo app if necessary.

Example of the digitized copy (picture taken with my iPhone) of our artwork.

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Insert the images into the PowerPoint template

Download and open postcard template in PowerPoint. Slide 1 is where you insert the custom images, and Slide 2 is for your messages, addresses, and stamps. Please note that the template yields two A6 (4.1″ x 5.8″) postcards.

Click on the left white rectangle to prompt the SHAPE FORMAT option to appear. To fill in the shape with an image, click on SHAPE FILL → PICTURES → INSERT PICTURES FROM A FILE. Select the artwork file on your desktop.

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Adjust the image size

PowerPoint automatically stretches the image to “fill” the shape, which sometimes distorts the picture size disproportionately. To fix this, click on the image and select PICTURE FORMAT → CROP → FIT.

Click on one of the white circles located at the corners of the image (NOT the black lines), and expand or contract the image while holding down the SHIFT key to adjust the dimensions proportionally. To re-position (ex: centering the image), click on the image and drag it to the desired position. Click on CROP again to set the new dimensions and placement.

From here, you can get fancy by adding custom text on top of the image, but that is entirely optional.

Repeat filling in the image and adjusting its position on the right rectangle.

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Print on card stock

I prefer to save my PowerPoint file as a PDF (FILE → SAVE AS → PDF) prior to printing so that it can be universally opened by outside printers since I do not have a printer at home.

Print the PDF in actual size, double-sided on card stock and cut along the borders.

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In this day and age, handwritten letters is becoming a lost art — something I intend to change with my kids. The Dumpling and I made an activity out of visiting the post office, sticking on stamps, and dropping our postcards in the mail box. We hope our friends and family would appreciate receiving these in the mail!

Halloween Activities: Geometric Tape-Resist and Shadow Puppets

It seems like the Dumpling and I have been waiting for Halloween to come since Janaury! While she still doesn’t really understand what Halloween is, she associates it with ghosts, witches, zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc…all thanks to watching videos on YouTube. Even though All Hallow’s Eve isn’t until the end of the month, we are pretending it’s a month-long celebration in our household.

For our first week of Halloween, we did light and shadow play with some not-so-spooky silhouttes and got super messy with another tape-resist project!

Halloween Shadow Puppets

Materials

• Halloween shadow puppet printable (click here to download)
• Toilet paper roll
• Small safety-pin or thin needle
• Towel
• Scrap cardboard
• Phone flashlight

Protect your work area by covering it with scrap cardboard.

Lay the printable on top of a towel and puncture the image outlines with a pin or needle. I initially used a pin with a thick point and some of the details got lost as a result, so I would recommend using something thin. While the space between each hole isn’t fixed, I eyeballed the distance to approximately 1.5 mm of space apart.

Cut out the circle card for each image.

With your phone’s flashlight on, place the toilet paper roll directly on top of the light (encircling it completely) and then lay a card on top of the roll. It’s best to do the activity in total darkness and cast the images on an empty wall or ceiling. The Dumpling and I did this right before bed and made up silly one or two sentence stories with the silhouettes.

I don’t really understand the science behind it, but our images were casted upside down (I rotated them right side up in my photos below) and we sometimes saw double outlines. Once the Dumpling is older, we can explore the hows and whys…but for now, it’s all magic!

Colored Bubbles with Geometric Tape-Resist Halloween Silhouettes

Materials

• Geometric cat and ghost printable (click here to download)
• White heavy copy paper or drawing paper (the stock needs to withstand the bubble solution but thin enough to see through)
• Bubble solution (use different bottles or separate into smaller containers for each color)
• Bubble wands
• Food coloring (we used a fall colored palette of red, yellow, orange and brown)
• Painter’s tape (approximately 1/8″ wide)

Lay your copy or drawing paper on top of the printable. You need to be able to see through to the bottom layer as if you’re about to trace the image. You may also want to paper clip the pieces together so they don’t move.

Apply painter’s tape on top of the lines. Before investing the effort in applying all that tape, test peeling off a small strip to see whether it tears your paper. If it does, tape the strip on your shirt first to remove some of its adhesiveness.

Mix food coloring into the bubble solutions.

Blow the bubbles on top of the taped image. I would have preferred to have done this outdoors because it got super messy! Since we don’t have a yard, we did this in our bath tub and I sprayed everything down afterwards. With colored bubbles popping everywhere, the red and brown splatters made our bathroom looked like a murder scene!

Peel the tape off once everything dries completely.

DIY Tape-Resist Geometric Animals

Geometric art seems to be popular these days, so I wanted to incorporate the design trend in my next art project with the Dumpling. Combining it with the tape-resist technique, the Dumpling and I put a twist on this classic kid-friendly activity to create a series of geometric animals…and a heart!

Our tape-resist geometric art series (clock-wise): elephant, heart, flamingo, fox, and rabbit.

Taping the designs might seem complicated and cumbersome, but I managed to create them pretty easily by tweaking a hack I learned online.

Materials

• Geometric animal outlines (download from thenounproject.com)
• Painter’s tape of desired width (I used 0.25″)
• Scissors
• Watercolor paper (or sturdy paper)
• Watercolor
• Pencil
• Photocopy paper (optional)
• Safety pin (optional)
• Towel (optional)

Directions

Download a geometric animal design. Head over to thenounproject.com to peruse its library of geometric animals and download the one you would like to use. All the animal designs I used in this project were created by Agne Alesiute from the Noun Project.

Dot the corners of the animal print. Open the image file on your computer and tape the paper (the one you will be painting on) onto the monitor so the print shines through. It doesn’t need to be perfectly visible—just enough to see the outlines. If preferred, zoom in to enlarge for a bigger design.

I have turned my monitor into a makeshift light table!

Lightly dot all of the corners with a pencil…with emphasis on “lightly” because you don’t want the markings to be noticeable on the final.

The red dots indicate the corners that need to be dotted with a pencil.

If your paper stock that is too thick for the image to shine through, apply this step on regular photocopy paper first. Then remove the photocopy paper from your monitor and puncture the dots with a safety pin. I’ve found it helpful to do this on top of a flat surface with a towel underneath. Using the punctured image as a guide as to where to dot, lay it on top of the paper you will be painting on and lightly mark each hole with a pencil…again, emphasis on “lightly”.

Connect the dots with painter’s tape. Before investing the effort in applying all that tape, test peeling off a small strip to see whether it tears your paper. If it does, tape the strip on your shirt first to remove some of its adhesiveness.

As you are connecting each dot, keep the original image file open on your screen for reference because the dots may look entirely random!

Color with watercolor.

I’m always shocked that the paper doesn’t rip under all that water. Go IKEA art supplies!

Peel the tape off once the paint dries. I removed all the strips easily and was rewarded with sharp, clean lines. Despite spending so much effort taping everything on, it was quite satisfying taking them off!

* All geometric animal designs used here are created by Agne Alesiute from the Noun Project.