Bella Angel

Bella Angel is one of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow.  If I was making the perfect girl Weird Science style I would probably end up creating her.  I like tall girls (she's 6'), curvy, and the English accent is a huge turn-on.  Also, it doesn't hurt one bit that she's sporty and intelligent.

Since Bella is a golf enthusiast I revisited the Paige Spirinac 1989 Upper Deck model I created and subbed in Bella's pics and info.

Home Alone

Typically I do not make cards with timing in mind.  I just kind of make what I feel like, when I feel like and if it matches up with a season or anniversary it's probably just luck.  With that being said I knew I wanted to make a Home Alone set to release around the holidays for quite awhile now.  The problem was I procrastinated until almost too late.  Well, I jut got this one in under the wire.

Matching the year of the movie's release I did these in the style of the 1990 Topps baseball set.  I thought about a red or green border to make it more Christmasy but went with blue as it reminded me of the movie poster for Home Alone.

1990 Topps baseball

I found that there's tons of little Home Alone factoids so I packed the backs of these cards with those did ya knows.  Theses are more most info rich PCb. card backs to date.

Sig. Showcase: Eric Roberts

Along with vintage influenced custom cards I create I also enjoy making trading cards to be used for autographs.  I collect a lot of things, too many things.  Autographs are one of those things, especially on trading cards.

A lot of my autograph custom designs do not have a vintage inspired theme, nor are they part of a set.  Not everything needs a set made.  Sometimes I just want to try and get the autograph on something that looks cool to me.  That's the case with this card. 

The Ambulance (1990) is a severely underrated suspense/horror movie in my personal opinion.  It's got a great cast with Eric Roberts, Janine Turner, James Earl Jones, Megan Gallagher, Eric Braeden, Red Buttons and Stan Lee -- as himself.  I think this movie probably gets lost in the shuffle because of it's horrible movie covers, be it VHS or DVD.  The U.S. cover looks like a 90's Lifetime drama, but if you take a look at the overseas covers I think more people would have been inclined to take it off of the shelf back-in-the-day if it looked like the one to the right.

When I made this card I was toying around with making autograph cards that have a horizontal orientation.  Before with most of my autograph customs were your typical vertical photo to white fade signature area.  Those can be cool, but they're usually not all that unique from a design standpoint, they're more about the picture and have a clean area to be signed.  A horizontal design presents a little more challenge because it doesn't really look that great to put the white fade next to the picture.  You have to be a little more creative and design a whole card.

I came up with the idea to use the equal length cross that used to be really prominent on older emergency medical vehicles -- like on the hood of the evil old Cadillac ambulance in the movie-- as the area designated for the signature.  On the four outer corner blocks I used four movie scenes and gave them a red hue to fit with the sinister ambulance theme.  This card is a little different than most horizontal cards being as the design moves right-to-left instead of the other way around.  The ones I've made since this one go left-to-right, but I just thought this one looked better this way.

I had no luck getting this signed thought the mail but I sent a copy in to The Hollywood Show at the beginning of this month when I saw Mr. Roberts was on the guest list of signers.  As requested he signed in red which I just thought really would look great on this particular design.

Link

When it's October it's standard operating procedure to watch horror movies.  This past October was no exception.  I did the regulars; Freddy, Jason, and Michael.  I also added Link to the VHS queue.  Sure, Link isn't your typical slasher horror movie, more of a suspense type of horror; add in a maniacal ape.  Plus, you hardly need a reason to watch a movie starring Elisabeth Shue and General Zod.

Link is a movie I've known about for many years thanks to my lifelong crush on Elisabeth Shue.  But, I only viewed it for the first time maybe three years ago, and several times since.  I'd watch the movie even if it didn't have the gratuitous Elisabeth Shue bathroom scene, but that certainly only adds to it's watchability.

While I was watching I thought a Link trading card set could be pretty cool and unique but I doubted I would be able to make one assuming there would be a lack of quality images available being that Link is a bit obscure.  To my pleasant surprise my assumption made an ass out of you and me.  Well, maybe just me, you had nothing to do with it.  I found a decent number of photos online and the only thing left was to commit them to cardboard.

Most of my cards you'll notice have a sports card influence to them.  I wanted this set to have a 100% non-sports card feel.  I couldn't really find any card set from 1986 --the movie's release year-- to match what I had in mind.  So, I went would a non-sports design that was inspired by a look that Topps used at least twice that I can recall.  Once was with the 1979 Incredible Hulk set and the other was the 1984 Gremlins set.

A lot of time and effort went into this and I'm super pumped with the end result.  I think of all the sets I've done this one is right up there as far as being able to pass as an actual vintage set.  A true "phantom" of a card set.

I think the jagged border fits great plus the little link cameo in the lower corner.  I'm just as proud of the card back.  I used sort of a inverse design of the front of the cards and then researched fun facts and quotes to complete the cards.

There are 17 numbered cards and to top it off there's a card sized sticker to really give it that vintage non-sports set finishing touch.

Paige Spiranac

Here's yet another custom card inspired by an early 90's Upper Deck baseball design.  This is done in the style of the inaugural 1989 Upper Deck baseball set with a bit of a golf tweak to suit the subject.  That subject being the incredible Paige Spiranac. 

Paige is a pro golfer as well as a model/media personality.  In the same mold as the other woman I've made cards of recently using the UD designs she's got the game to go along with the good looks.  Paige, to me, looks like a real life Barbie doll, and I mean that in the best way possible.  I'm not much of a golf enthusiast really but I would make time to check it out if she was playing.  Shameless, yes, I'm aware. 

In spite of being a pro golfer Paige really doesn't have much of a trading card presence outside of inclusion in Topps' multi-sport 2018 Allen & Ginter set, so I decided to make her a proper, albeit unofficial, rookie card.

Ali Mills

In my never ending quest to come up with excuses for making new custom Karate Kid cards, I present to you my latest creation.

This Ali Mills "Heart Breaker" card is a play on the 1984 Topps football "Record Breaker" subset.  The photo is either a behind the scenes shot or a deleted scenes shot, I'm not 100% sure.

Michelle Jenneke

I've been having fun with early 90's Upper Deck designs as of late.  When I posted the Allison Stokke card on Instagram it was suggested in the comments that I also take a swing at a Michelle Jenneke card.  Well, it was actually suggested a few time, because you see, you simply cannot look up Allison Stokke or Winifer Fernández without Google recommending that you also check out Michelle Jenneke.  World class athletes in three different sports, but they have the common thread of being internet viral level hot.

Australian Olympic hurdler Michelle Jenneke caught the world's attention with her pre-race warm-up dance.  While some may describe her warm-up routine as "sexy" I think it's, pardon the language, fucking adorable.  She's infectiously cute and bubbly.  Personally, seeing it puts me in a good mood.  It's the kittens and puppies of warm-up routines.

For Michelle's card I went with the 1990 Upper Deck baseball inspired design.  It's simple, clean and distinctly early 90's Upper Deck.  I tweaked the top border a bit to give it more of a track and field feel.

1990 Upper Deck baseball

Garbage Phantom Kids

My love for trading cards started with Garbage Pail Kids.  My introduction to the gross-out Cabbage Patch dolls parody came in 1986 the the series' third installment.  From the very first .25¢ pack I was completely hooked.  Flipping through a stack of vintage Garbage Pail Kids these is about as nostalgic as it can get for me.  What I've come to realize that I really didn't as a snot-nosed kid was that I genuinely love the artwork.  Guys like John Pound, Tom Bunk, James Warhola and Jay Lynch are legends of my childhood.

I think it's pretty darn cool that the GPK franchise was revived for a whole community of man-kids like myself to enjoy, plus any younger collectors that may stumble upon them.  There's also a great new crop of artists carrying on the Garbage Pail tradition.  I was lucky enough to link up with one of those artists to help in creating the PCb. brand's second trading card.

Back in the early part of the summer I brought a concept to Mark Pingitore to bring to life for a Jackie Stalegum Garbage Pail Kids inspired card.  Mark has signed a few of the Garbage Pail cards he's done for me over the years and I knew him to be extremely gracious with his fans.  Actually, I find all the artists to be that way for the most part.

What I asked of Mark was for this card to be a mixture of 3 main inspirations.  First was the Jackie Stalegum character, the second was the infamous 1989 Fleer Billy Ripken F*ck Face "error" card, and lastly was the Garbage Pail Kids' Series 5 Hot Rod (#205a) by John Pound.  I've always loved the artwork on that particular card and I'm drawn to the colors in the background.  In my mind that mashup had classic GPK written all over it.  A couple of ancillary details I asked for was for PCb. to be on the bat's knob like the Ripken card and to have Jackie's bubblegum bubble to be revealing part of a skull face.

I had a slight bit of trepidation when commissioning the piece because it was to be done in marker.  Unlike a digital rendering it's pretty much a one shot deal.  There's zero hyperbole when I say I could not be more pleased with the results.  It is better than I would have imagined, and Mark NAILED everything I asked for.  As soon as I stopped drooling all that was left was to make it into a trading card.  If you would have told me as a kid that I'd have a chance to have a brainchild of mine turned into Garbage Pail Kid art I would probably also assumed I lived in a giant mansion and was the star of television shows and professional sports teams.  I'll take the one out of the four.

• Jackie Stalegum 2a card (#'d/50)
• Jackie 2au Pingitore auto sealed in UV protected Ultra Pro one-touch (#'d/12)
• 2b Jim Mint sticker (#'d/50)
• Garbage Phantom Kids die-cut sticker combo
• 1.25" button

Men At Work

I may have mentioned it in another post, but back in the early '90s we used to watch a lot of HBO, especially in the dog days of summer when there wasn't much else to do.  Any time I see that old "HBO Feature Presentation" intro floods me with nostalgia of watching the premier of a anticipated new movie with my family. 

Men At Work was a movie I watched a ton of time.  My mom like it so much I remember she dubbed it on VHS.  It's one of the movies that I could probably go line-by-line for most of its scenes.  Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez had great chemistry, and why shouldn't they, right?  They're brothers after all.  They should have done more movies together, in my opinion.  Keith David also killed it in this movie.

For this card I wanted a way to feature both Carl and James on the same card.  That drew me to the 1990 Fleer baseball "Major League Prospects" subset.  I remember being really geeked when I pulled the George Canale / Kevin Maas  Prospects card.  With all the hype surrounding Maas I was sure that car would one day be worth roughly a zillion dollars.  Yea, no.

Winifer Fernández

Encouraged by how my Allison Stokke card turned out I was eager to try another Upper Deck inspired design. 

Winifer Fernández basically became the Allison Stokke of women's volleyball in 2016 when images and video of her went viral because she's really, reallly attractive.  But, just like Stokke she is way more than just a pretty face, but rather a very accomplished athlete at her own respective sport, and like Allison Stokke that was pretty much overlooked on account of her being smoking hot.  So, like I did with Allison Stokke I made a custom card that highlights both Winifer's beauty and her athletic brilliance. 

I wouldn't have minded again using the 1989 Upper Deck baseball design for this card but I didn't think it lent itself as well to volleyball.  So, I went looking for a basketball design since both sports are played indoors on a gym floor.

1992-93 Upper Deck McDonald's

I landed on the 1992-93 Upper Deck McDonald's basketball.  I remember being really excited about theses cards when they came out.  I don't have stats and figures but I want to say around this time basketball cards were taking the hobby spotlight from baseball.  This was due to it being Shaq's rookie year and there was never anyone quite like him before, a true phenomenon.  You also had hobby favorite Michael Jordan and his Chicago Bulls thoroughly dominating the league in the midst of their first three-peat run.

The 1992-93 Upper Deck McDonald's were a 50 card set only available at McDonald's restaurants.  I seem to recall with the purchase of a value meal you could also get a pack of these cards.  McDonald's did something similar with NBA Hoops the season prior. Cards came three to a pack in the familiar Upper Deck foil wrappers.  It was just star players bolstered by a solid rookie class that was headed by names like Shaquille O'Neal, Alonzo Mourning and Christian Laettner.

I was always a fan of oddball type issues.  I dunno, just something about them that's a bit more exotic I guess.  Cards used to come as cereal prizes, on snack boxes, as fast food premiums, retail store exclusive boxed sets, etc.  These were always favorites of mine because they were a little more difficult to come by, especially pre-internet.

Another Fletch Card

While sifting through my personal card collection I was reminded of Star's 1985 All-Star subset that was sponsored by Miller Lite (there's also a version that uses the same player photo just with a gold border and a Crunch 'n Munch logo).  I thought the Lite version would be awesome for a Fletch card.  Even though I've made a number of Fletch cards I went back for one more.

Since I started making these custom cards I've done a three Fletch basketball cards starting with a 1985 Topps baseball inspired design.  There was also the behind-the-scenes shot of Chevy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar that I plugged into a 1986 Fleer basketball inspired design.  After that was the 1985 Star Co. design with the purple Lakers border.

Not only did I think it would be a humorous addition because of the beer sponsor, but it also gave me a chance to do a custom card back. 

At this point I've just resigned myself to the fact that I'll never be done making custom Chevy Chase cards.

Allison Stokke

Remember Allison Stokke?  She's the California high school pole vaulter that became an overnight phenomenon thanks to a candid photo of her that went viral in 2007.  While a then 17 year old Stokke was simply waiting for her next vault a photograph was taken of her that made its way onto a popular sports blog and changed her life.  That photograph also sparked a lot of controversy over the sexualization of female athletes.

Anyone with a set of eyes, or even if ya just have one, can see why this image spread across the internet like a California wildfire.  There's no two ways around it, Allison Stokke is a beautiful girl.  But, looking at that same picture there's something equally as obvious, Allison Stokke is an athlete.  You don't get the muscle tone she has by sitting around texting.  Allison's athletic accomplishments were every bit her world class beauty's rival.  Stokke wasn't merely participating in track and field she was breaking national records on her way to earning a full ride to The University of California.

Unfortunately for her the years of dedication got overlooked because of well, her hotness, basically.

I wanted to make a card for her that gave that infamous photo somewhat of a redemption.  I wanted my card to recognize her athletic accomplishments while not pretending that she isn't  incredibly stunning.  There's no reason why she can't be both.

1989 Upper Deck

With the photo locked and loaded I needed to decide what kind of design to use.  The image is from 2007 and I couldn't pick out a 2007 trading card design from a 2017, so that was out of the question.  Gotta keep it vintage inspired, my friends.  I noticed Allison was born in 1989 and with I had a great excuse to finally use the ground breaking 1989 Upper Deck baseball inspired design.

Not only can the 1989 Upper Deck easily double as a track and field motif it is also home to maybe the most important baseball card of all-time ... the Ken Griffey, Jr. card no. 1 (although the '52 Mantle might have something to say about that).  The '89 Griffey  rookie really started the baseball card boom of the 1990s when it seemed like there was a card shop popping up on every corner.  The 1989 Upper Deck cards were white hot.  They added a premium look to baseball cards with the glossy white stock, high resolution photos and hologram technology.  I even recall a  small lawn mower shop by my house that would put out a sandwich board advertising that they had Upper Deck baseball cards.  A lawn mower shop for Pete's sake!  People spent obscene amounts of money trying to horde the Griffey RC as a future investment.  Unfortunately the bubble has long since burst due to there being no real scarcity of any card from the era, especially after the internet came along.

Since THE photo was how the world was introduced to Allison I threw the famous UD rookie logo on her card.  This card comes along at a good time being that I'm starting to do more with card backs.  This gave me a chance to highlight Allison's athletic prowess and also add another great smiling shot of her.  I also got a chance to use my hologram tamper sticker as part of the card's overall design in the same way Upper Deck made famous with there card's design.

Allison went on to have a solid vaulting career at UC Berkeley where she earned All-American honors in 2011.  Not only that but the also completed a masters degree in sociology from UC.  She continued to compete professionally after college while also getting into the world of sportswear modeling for likes of Nike and others.  Just this month Allison married professional golfer Ricky Fowler who she'd been dating since 2017.

Darthy McFly

There's been a couple of times I've come up with a custom card idea that I can't believe I didn't think of earlier.  Add this card to that list.

Remember that scene in Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox appears to  Crispin Glover as Darth Vader the extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan?  I went out on a limb thinking some Stars Wars fans may have also seen BTTF and could appreciate a good custom trading card mashup.

Friday The 13th Part 2

I wanted to get this set done in time to have it out last month when the 13th fell on a Friday, but I just couldn't get it in under the wire.  So, I held onto it figuring an October release would be the next best thing.

The inspiration the do a custom card mini-set from this movie was really so I could do a card of Kirsten Baker's "Terry" character.  I know everyone loves Amy Steel's "Ginny" and she is a phenomenal female lead, but for me it's all about Terry.  I have no shame.  She was tanned, toned and pretty much perfect.  But, if I was going to make a Terry card I might as well go ahead and get the whole Camp Packanack gang back together.

Other than that though I really do like this chapter of the Friday The 13th franchise.  I like that Jason has a little different aesthetic wearing a burlap sack as opposed to the trademark hockey mask.  I also like it because it's one of the only movies where he's killing actual campers, which is part of the Jason Voorhees shtick.  Jason technically only does that in this movie and again in Part VI.

To coincide with the year the movie was released I went with a 1981 Donruss inspired design.  This is only the second time I've used this charmingly vintage looking template; the first time coming with my Freaks an Geeks set.  I outfitted all of the cards with a blue border as a tie-in to Jason's blue flannel shirt.

I've been experimenting more with card back designs in the last few sets I've made.  For this set each card got it's own numbered back, each with different movie fun fact.

I've included a special addition to this set.  There's 3 two-card puzzles, and when you combine those 6 cards they make another puzzle on the back side.

Bad News Bears

You would think that if one was making custom trading cards from movies (primarily) then The Bad News Bears would be on the shortests of short lists.  While The Bad News Bears has always been on my radar I’ve hesitated because if I were to make a set, I would want it to be in a 1976 inspired design to coincide with the movie’s year of release, and that only leaves the 1976 Topps set.  While I like the look of that particular set I’ve shied away from the base set design due to the clip-art like baseball player in the lower left of the card’s frame denoting the various player field positions.  It just seemed like it would be a real pain to recreate.  Being that back in 1976 Topps still had a monopoly on the baseball card market that was all there was to choose from, or so I thought…

From 1975 through 1979 Topps partnered with Hostess to create a package premium that gave collectors another baseball card set to chase.  For their time these cards were very popular for the simple fact it was something else to go after once they completed their 1976 Topps sets.

The cards were distributed on specially marked packages of Hostess products.  There were 150 cards in a complete set. The first 60 cards could be found individually on Twinkie packages and then again as part one of the 50 three-card panels on confections like HoHos, King Dons, Suzy Q’s and Choco-Diles.  So as you can imagine collecting all 150 required dedication and a Herculean sweet tooth.  Add to it that we’re talking pre-internet days, so there was more legwork involved in networking with other collectors.  There’s stories of ambitious collectors posting on grocery stores’ bulletin boards offering to buy the Hostess boxes (sans the treats) from shoppers.

1976 Hostess

The 1976 offering’s three bar design was similar to that of the regular Topps set but each card shared the same red, white and blue color scheme.  If it slipped your mind, 1976 was the country’s bicentennial celebration and it was red, white and blue coiffing for everything that summer and these cards were riding that patriotic wave.  They are smaller than a standard issue trading card measuring in at approximately 2.25” x 3.25” and had a dashed outer border to encourage collectors to cut them out.  The backs are pretty basic with the card number, player’s name, biographical info plus a 5-year stat snapshot (plus a lifetime line).

I took a little extra time with this set knowing how beloved this movie is.  If you’re familiar with the movie you know it’s the type of non-PC film that you could get away with 43 years ago, but would never see the light of day in 2019.  There was a remake in 2005 starring Billy Bob Thorton in the Morris Buttermaker role that I’ve never bothered to watch but I have to imagine it was not word-for-word dialog to the original.

There was a lot of research done to find the right images and field positions.  I also tried my best to put these on a card stock that would be similar to that of the original cards found on the side of Hostess boxes.  I also want the card backs to have a similar look to ‘76 Hostess cards.  Instead of making up biographical information I put the name of the actor below the character’s name.  In place of statistics I went with a colorful quote for each character.  There’s cards of each of the Bears plus Roy Turner and his son Joey from the rival Yankees.