Archive for the ‘custom cards’ Tag
So 2012 Spring Training has started and pictures are starting to come in from various sources. Last year I compiled a 55 card set of custom cards of Royals that were in spring training and it got me very excited for the year. I plan to do the same. In fact, I have re-designed 2012 Topps already and made a logo to put on each card commemorating that it is the spring training set (something I didn’t do last year.) I will spend today compiling cards and start posting at least one per day until opening day most likely. It looks like the Royals have about 58 players in camp so I would like to get about a 50 card set this year as well. I will get as many cards as I can. Opening Day is only 25 days away so many days will have 2-3 cards posted hopefully. I don’t know how much of value I have to say about the players but I might write about many of the cards I post.
A word about the logo: Obviously it is based on the 2012 Royals All-Star Game logo, almost the same in fact. I re-created it and have changed the wording from “ALL-STAR GAME” to “SPRING TRAINING” and replaced the MLB logo with a Royals logo. There are a couple other very small differences but they really aren’t worth mentioning. I think the logo looks good and will work well with this set. It’s time to get excited! Baseball season is here!
1951 Topps is significant to my History of Joakim Soria project for a couple reasons. First, it is the very first year Topps put out a card… there is no 1950 Topps. They weren’t exactly the as other Topps years either. They had rounded corners and were shorter than the regular 3.5 inch baseball card that would soon become common. It had different baseball results so they could be played like a card game. I chose “Ball” for Joakim Soria because it was one of the first cards I found to use for a template.
Secondly, it is the LAST History of Joakim Soria card. My last post was 2012 Topps and soon after I got the motivation to finish off my complete set! I’m pretty excited about it. I spent about a year and a half (off and on of course) re-creating the Topps cards and have finally finished all 61 years. I think it may be a set like no other. I will continue to post these throughout the season as I still have several left to put up on the site.
I like the Matt Cassel 1978 Topps football card I did so I wanted to make it into a baseball card. I like the way it turned out and I think I may do a few more of them later. I think it could actually make a really nice whole set.
It’s a lonely, lonely place at AHairOffSquare with no baseball. I thought football could get me through the winter but I’m just not feeling it. Spring Training is coming soon! Here is a football card I made last year. I love the card design, so simple but classy looking. The colors on the picture really make the card pop too. I like this 1978 Topps football card a lot.
“The History of Joakim Soria” is back with another one of the cards from the bland years of Topps. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it seemed Topps was in a bit of a rut. They weren’t cranking out bad designs, just a little bland and not very unique. You can see on this 1998 card the addition of transparent borders to try to liven the card up, what it does is make it busy and distracts from the picture, something I feel you never want to do. The name block has the team’s logo repeated several times in the background, another thing to make the card just look busy. I do like how the actual name of the player runs into the solid box possessing the team’s name though. My last comment; another solid gold border; yuck. Overall, not a good design by Topps.
Most of my re-creations of Topps cards are portrait cards. This one is a landscape card for a couple reasons: I want to represent certain years that did have sideways cards, not all of them did, I don’t think any base cards were sideways from 1972 – 1990. The second reason is some designs look nice in a landscape format. The last reason is simply I have pictures that won’t fit “up and down” on a card like this one.
Here is the 12th and final installment of the Major League Debut cards for 2011. Having 12 players make their major league debut is a pretty amazing statistic. The Royals are so young that this really wasn’t too surprising however. I plan to continue these cards next year with hopefully a few more(Mike Montgomery, Clint Robinson, David Lough, it is hard to tell.)
Kelvin Herrera has great stuff but his major league debut didn’t really reflect that fact. On his first major league pitch he hit a batter. Things didn’t get a whole lot better after that. His final line was 1 inning, 2 hits and 3 earned runs. He has the dreaded ERA of 27.00 for right now and received the loss in his very first game. Still a major milestone making it to the biggs for Herrera. Hopefully he will get opportunities to redeem himself in the bullpen in Kansas City next year.
1994 Topps is sort of a forgotten set that is actually not too bad. I have always wanted to incorporate the home plate shape into a card some how and this set sort of did it. The picture comes to a point at the bottom that makes it look a little like home plate. I like the script font as well. The problem with script fonts is that they can be difficult to read. This font is no exception. It is not matched exact but thanks to fellow custom card-er Harvey Berkman, I was able to get pretty darn close. This font is Vladamir Script and is close enough if you are trying to re-create this set. The rest of the card is a lot of unnecessary flash; many gradients that don’t add dimension, they just add color.
Now to the picture. I have wanted to do this picture for a while. If you have been to a Royals game and got the pleasure to watch Joakim Soria enter a game you know why the picture is cool. Kauffman Stadium blasts “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N Roses and all the scoreboards around the stadium show flames. The crowd naturally gets into the moment and it creates a very cool environment not seen too often for a team consistently low in the standings.
The picture is not the best, normally the pictures I choose are a little cleaner than this one but it was all I could find. If you click on it you can see the pixelization but I had to use it anyway. The set fits well with the picture too. When I started the “History of Joakim Soria” project, this is the kind of card I had in mind.
Here is another card from the 1983 Topps Royals set I am making. Luis Mendoza made his 2011 debut yesterday making him I believe the 40th Royal to suit up this year. There should be 2 more; Lorenzo Cain and Kelvin Herrera. This is my 38th card from this set; I haven’t posted cards of Yamaico Navarro, Jesse Chavez and of course Cain and Herrera.
Offensive Linemen get no love; especially from the Football card industry. Here is a rare card of a lineman; the Buccaneers Donald Penn.
Mario Manningham week 2 vs. St. Louis Rams; 3 catches, 56 yards
A Hair Off Square 