Paige Spiranac Card Dump

Although I haven't been posting them, I've been making Paige Spiranac cards and setting them aside over the last few years.  I'll save images and sort of use them as custom card practice.  I've decided to now post all of the Paige cards I've made so far.  The first two are inspired by the 1989 and 1991 Upper Deck baseball designs respectively.  

Inspired by: 1990 & 1992 UD baseball

Inspired by 1993-94 UD basketball / 1989-90 NBA Hoops

Inspired by 1991 UD football / 1988 Topps football

Inspired by: 1992-93 McDonald's UD basketball / 1991 UD football

Inspired by: 1985 Topps First Blood Part II / 1986 Topps baseball

I think this one, inspired by the 1991-92 Skybox basketball set, is my favorite of the lot.  It's such a clean look.  This is one I'd love to one day have signed.

Here's two bonus cards that I made early on and was able get signed.  The first is inspired by the 1987 Topps baseball design and the one on the right is just an autograph card design I came up with.  Paige was pretty good at signing through the mail but as her popularity has grown I'm assuming it's harder for her to keep up with it, which is understandable.

 

Martin

Martin was another show I watched a lot of back in the '90s when I didn't have cable.  When it was syndicated on whichever of the big channels it was on I probably watched it every day.  Of course I dug that it was based in Detroit and Martin is a funny dude.  Martin Lawrence for awhile was the "it" comedian, sort of like Kevin Hart is these days.

These cards came to be when I saw a picture of Martin playing basketball form an episode where his mouth gets him in trouble when he scoffs at the idea of women being able to do anything as well as a man, especially sports.  Gina teaches him a lesson setting up a basketball game pitting Martin and his "Marty Mar All-Stars" against some friends of hers that just happen to be the 1996 Woman's United States Olympic Basketball team.  I chose to do the basketball card is in the style of the 1993-94 Upper Deck set.

While creating the basketball card I was reminded of the most memorable image --for me at least-- from the Martin show.  It's from the Season 2 episode "Guard Your Grill" where Martin defends Gina's honor in a charity boxing match against one of Detroit's most favorite sons, Thomas "Hitman" Hearns.  Needless to say ol' Marty Mar got lumped up.  This card is done in the style of Topps' 1979 Rocky II set.  This was the first time using this set for me.  It's simple, but a pretty recognizable non-sports card set from back-in-the-day.

Above The Rim

1993-94 Upper Deck

Back in middle school I still had high hopes of being a professional basketball player. I’m of average height with the skill set to match, but I held out hope for an eight inch growth spurt that simply never came. Basketball was my passion. I wore the And1 gear and studied SLAM Magazine like it was religious text. After school I always had a few hours to myself before anyone else got home and nearly every day I would watch my copy of Above The Rim that I dubbed off of cable. For this period of time it supplanted The Karate Kid as my favorite and to this day remains among my top favorites.

There’s a lot of great basketball movies that have been made, but for me Above The Rim is number one. It’s urban and from living in and around Detroit that made it more relatable to me, the streetball element. It told a great story. Tupac and Leon were cool as hell. Duane Martin was brash reminding me of a young Allen Iverson and Marlon Wayans was really funny. Plus the soundtrack was super hot. You probably can’t find too many people between the ages of 30 and 40 that don’t know “Regulators” by Nate Dogg and Warren G word-for-word.

Above The Rim was released in 1994 so I chose to go with a 1993-94 Upper Deck basketball inspired design. Around this time, the mid-’90s, I was exclusively collecting basketball cards so these were real fun for me to recreate especially for this particular movie. Unless I’m forgetting one these are the first Upper Deck inspired design I’ve done.

I went with the blue-to-black gradient based on Kyle Watson’s Shout Out Tournament team wearing blue, and I also thought it looked got with Birdie’s team’s black unis.