Sometimes doing art as ministry looks like creating vintage alphabet cards for Vacation Bible School. We did a Wonder Junction theme this year in Kemmerer and Cokeville, and the setting was an old west railroad town — which was absolutely perfect for our area (also a small western town with a railroad)! We had so much fun putting it together, and I was thrilled to put my art skills to work in creating these cards. Was it something we needed for that week? Nope. Was it something that totally brought together the idea of an old one-room schoolhouse? Definitely.
I think it took about 50 hours of researching what would have existed in that time period, designing the card layout and style, drawing each illustration by hand, and printing and assembling them to hang. Small wonder it took me almost 2 months to pick up my ipad again after finishing these cards!
I decided that a vintage set had to be sepia colored, with a classic serif-style font and simple line drawings for each image. They’re not quite historically accurate for the pre-1900s, but they were the closest I could create on short notice (aka, about 2 weeks before VBS). And though I have started drawing a lot more in the past year, some of the items were really a challenge! The boots, lantern, train, and wagon were probably the most fun to draw… the flat iron, treasure map, and yoyo were the most difficult, especially trying to get perspectives and scale to look right.
If you’re curious, here are the items I selected for this set of alphabet cards:
- Apple
- Boots
- Cactus
- Drum
- Eggs
- Fence
- Grain
- Horseshoe
- (Flat) Iron
- Jars
- Kite
- Lantern
- Map
- (Carpentry) Nails
- Overalls
- Pail
- Quilt
- Rope
- Sheriff’s badge
- Train
- Umbrella
- Vest
- Wagon
- Xylophone
- Yoyo
- Zipper
Definitely a challenge, but a fun one! At this point, I am not offering the alphabet cards for sale. However, if you could use something like this for your own church ministry, please let me know!