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Tag Archives: letter writing

I make! Brighter and brighter card edition

So, I’m sure you remember this from a few weeks ago.

SavedPicture-201367111046.jpgI made this irregular x-form card for a mailing group one of my friends started.  She’s an artsy person (I think she studied photography in college) and so I felt like my inaugural contribution to the mailing group should be more than just a letter.

My original plan involved a card and maybe something mustache related, as we both are fond of mustaches on sticks, but it’s been hard controlling my time with all the commuting I do.  In the end, I opted for just the card.

I got the idea for this card after seeing this one from Sarabande.  I saw that card perusing through the Extreme Cards and Papercrafting site.  You know, as one does.  I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned the Extreme site before.  It’s a good resource if you’re looking for pop-up card techniques and even some templates.

Anyway, I simplified the card from what you see in the Sarabande card.  It was too busy with the ring in extra ring in the middle because my card isn’t really that big.  I think the diameter of the outer rings were 3″ with a 0.5″ width.  It doesn’t give you that much room to play around in the middle.

Materials:

  • blue cardstock
  • golden yellow cardstock
  • yellow vellum
  • textured white cardstock
  • white gel pen
  • Silhouette machine

Description:

I drew everything in Silhouette Studio (the free version because I haven’t found a really good excuse to pay for the designer edition).  The outer circles are circles welded to a trapezoid.  I welded rounded rectangles to the inside of one of the circle frames as tabs to hold the inner circle.  There are slots cut on the tops and bottoms halfway through the width of the frames so that the bottom of the frame pieces can sit flush against the table.  There are slots cut in the tabs to hold the inner circle.

The inner circle is…just a circle.  I think I made the outer diameter of the inner circle about 1.5″ with a 0.25″ width.  There are slots cut on the top and bottom of the circle to fit the tabs on the frame.

I made the cloud shape by welding a bunch of circles and ellipses together.  The sun was made from two concentric circles and then I subtracted half circle pieces out to create the rays.  I actually decided halfway through making the card that I wanted to make the sun transparent, but I had already welded my cloud and sun together as one shape.  I ended up having Silhouette separate of the enclosed outlines of the cloud/sun shape and I cut them out separately.  I had to weld a few tabs onto the sun so I could glue on the rays and also weld some tabs onto the rays to be able to glue it onto the cloud.  Obviously I had to cut out mirror images of the cloud shapes and rays to assemble the whole thing.

I made a quick window envelope to display the sun and that was pretty much it.  The card can be opened and it stands nicely on the table.  The inner circle also flares out a little to give the whole thing some depth.

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Oh, you might want to know why I called it the “brighter and brighter card.”  Well, aside from the fact that there’s a sun coming out of the clouds.  I had a verse and associated song stuck in my head around that time.

But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, / Which shines brighter and brighter until the full day.
Prov. 4:18 (RcV)

It’s a rather encouraging verse and some of the people on my mailing list for the month were college students in the midst of finals.  I thought maybe they would like a cheery verse and card to bolster their spirits so they could rally through the end of the semester.  Or something.

So there you have it.  An irregular x-form card.

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Whimsey: February

Still making progress through my backlog of Whimseyboxes.  I may have said last time that I wasn’t working through them in order.  If I didn’t, well I’ll just say now that I’m not going through them in chronological order.

So this week’s craft was courtesy of February’s Whimseybox…as in last month’s.  February’s box was for washi tape mini memo boards.

Washi, for those not in the know, is a style of Japanese paper making.  Combine long, thin rolls of that paper with some acrylic glue, and you get tape.  Washi tape is typically fairly decorative and is low tack, so you commonly see it in stationery.

In the box were three wooden boards, a pad of paper, two rolls of washi tape, and a small box of colorful rubber bands.  I think I might have gotten some small Whimseybox buttons in this shipment.  I can’t remember and I’m stuck in a hotel right now, so I can’t check.  We’ll just say there were some buttons and that was the advertisement for February.

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Only two boards are shown because I accidentally started working on one before I took the materials picture. Oops.

Directions for the project was to decorate the boards with washi tape however you wanted and then to either use the rubber bands to support the pad of paper or to kind of haphazardly loop the rubber bands around the board so that you’d have a memo board.

Here’s their example.

Links back to source.

Links back to source.

And here are my boards.

WP_20130227_004I  decided to paint some of the boards because I thought it might make a nice contrast with the tape.  Otherwise, I followed the instructions.  There’s not much else to do besides follow the instructions, really.

The memo board on the left was painted white (acrylic) and then the tape was in applied in a woven pattern.  Um…you can’t really see that it’s woven.  I opted for only green rubber bands to complete the board.

The center board ended up being a notepad holder.  I didn’t paint this one and covered the entire board with tape in alternating stripes.  I looped the rubber bands around in rows to support the back of the pad.  You might notice that the upper right corner is missing some tape.  There was tape there, but it fell off before I took the picture.  I didn’t notice until after.  Alas.  Also, you get a sample of my handwriting.  Um…I haven’t practiced.

The memo board on the right was painted black (acrylic) and then I used the star tape only as a frame.  I finished it off with lots of orange and blue rubber bands.  It may have been too many rubber bands.  If you use a huge mess of rubber bands on such a small board, it gets kind of hard to stick anything onto the board.  Just FYI.

So, there they are.  The business cards you see are for Scottevest and Operation Write Home.  Why did I pick these business cards for the photo?  Well, because I actually made the memo boards to help me hold business cards that I use a lot.  But I didn’t want to use client and colleague business cards for the photo and both Scottevest and Operation Write Home gave me a TON of their business cards.

I have a couple jackets from Scottevest.  I like the concept (POCKETS! POCKETS EVERYWHERE!), but I have found that the quality of their products can vary.  Their customer service is nice and responsive.  They will take care of you if you’re really unsatisfied with what you receive.

Operation Write Home is really great if you like to make cards or write letters but don’t have a lot of people to send stuff to.  Operation Write Home sends snail mail to the troops overseas to help cheer them and ease the homesickness.  You should check it out.

And…here ends this week plug for a whole bunch of things, I guess.