Inspiration deck

The first project this year will be making an inspiration deck for yourself.

You start by purchasing an ordinary, cheap deck of cards, and some white paint (any ordinary room paint will do, you won't need much, so get a small can. Not the sample cans, a little bit more), and then some way of getting the paint from can on the cards, like a small roller or small paint brush meant for details in furniture or so. That is, not fine art paint brush.
Then you spread the cards on a newspaper and paint them white. (Of course you can choose any color you like, like teal or turquoise :-D) Let them dry, and repeat the procedure on the other side.
You should end up with 52 white cards (some decks of cards have more than 52 cards - there are up to 4 jokers and a couple of ad cards in the decks - the more the merrier.)
You can also buy 2-3 or more decks and paint them all white at the same time.

The collectible card games come with wide selection of storage units, boxes made for the cards, plastic pockets for a binder etc. These are the perfect size for your cards.

So what are you supposed to be doing with these cards?
These are going to be your Mixed Media Inspiration Deck.
Of course you should go and buy that, and the boosters as well, but it doesn't hurt to have more than those 52 cards, and if you are like me, you'd rather use the pennies to buy more art material than inspiration decks, how ever great they are.

I have two Pinterest boards that are useful in this:
Book of Shadows, Book of Light
Surface treatment
I have collected different ideas, pictures of other people's work, free tutorials etc. on these two boards.
Now, the idea is to take one of these ideas, any one, and write it on one of the cards.
For example:

From this video you get the following techniques and ideas for your inspiration cards:
- use string, yarn or thread to add texture to your page
- use tissue paper
- use color spray; for example spray ink
- use salt
- add glitter, shimmer, sparkle
- add some metallic wax
- add letters
- embossing, enameling - you can either use embossing powder and embossing heat tool (hair dryer, heat gun) or clear nail polish, which is a polymer lacquer (one could say plastic resin) - which ever is easier and cheaper for you. A clear drying hard glue works too.

You can make all your cards to look the same, so that you won't even subconsciously pick your favorites, or make the cards an example of the technique or suggestion on it. :-) Because it really doesn't matter if you have favorites and use them often :-D The main thing is TO CREATE and if you want to explore one technique or a couple of materials over the others, that's all fine! I mean, just think about watercolorists. They don't experiment with a lot of different media and materials and techniques, they have what they are good with, what they prefer to use, and use that to express what ever they wish to express.

Another idea, instead of cards you can use tags and have a "tag book" - all the tags in a ring. Then, in stead of shuffling the cards, you shuffle the book and do what ever comes up.