20 May Hapkido Themed Cards

My big brother is a Hapkido “Master”.  A 5^th Dan to be technical and exact.  This is a Big Deal and may make him the kindest lethal weapon ever.  LOL. For those who do not know, Hapkido is a Korean martial art, self-defense form.

I wanted to honor his hard work and years of Hapkido training with a Card.  I did not know anything about Hapkido so I had to do a little research so I could design a card for him that had meaning.

Apparently, in Hapkido you start out with a White belt and with training and testing you advance up the ranks earning a different color belt once you’ve proven, through execution of skill and testing, that you’re earned that level’s belt.  The belt order is:  White, Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, Brown, Red, and the highest level is a Black belt, which once achieved, makes you a “Master”.  As a Black belt you then earn a gold stripe with each level of further training and testing you achieve. 

So, with this knowledge I designed his cards.

For the first card, which I call “Hapkido Man”, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the word Hapkido in Korean 12 times and stacked each letter gluing the layers together.  I also used the Cameo to cut the shadow of the word for the front cover and mat layers.  I traced each letter on the inside layer of the card and then glued the stacked letters onto it so they would come through the front card layers with nice height when the card is closed.  I then typed the card sentiment, printed it with my laser printer and foiled it in red and black for the inside. I used the Joana Sheen, martial arts man diecut (now retired) and reproduced the style of my brother’s Hapkido uniform which has a black and white jacket and black pants.  I used a gold leafing pen to add 5 stripes on the Hapkido belt mimicking his real belt.

In the second card, I used ribbon with a Hapkido knot to represent each belt obtained to become a Black belt and put them in color order.  Again, I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out the word Hapkido in Korean. Below are pictures of the inside of the “Hapkido Man” card and the second “Hapkido Belts” card.

I REALLY liked the way the cards turned out and more importantly my brother like them as well and that felt GREAT!

That’s it for now, until next time: