3 posts tagged “handmade cards”

Hi, I have not posted for a very long time.  I have been busy with StockWiki Inc., creating a legal structure and all related legal contracts.  I took a couple of days off to make these quilted cards.  They look so sweet waiting to go out!  These cards took longer to assemble than most, about 40-45 minutes per card, because of the need to cut and paste accurately the many small pieces.  My favorite Stampin' Up demonstrator and teacher - Annette Wen - came up with this design. (Link to Annette's projects webpage and her Quilted Thank You Card)  I've modified it some and came up with variations.  My favorite was the last card I made, which uses rose red matting square and rose pink colors in the quilt corners (shown above).  I came up with this one because I was finished making the batch and I was relaxing and playing around with the design with my last remaining pieces of designer paper.  I used up ALL of the pages that have the relevant designs from the Bali Breeze designer paper pack (4 sheets out of 10).  Total cards made = 20.

Card size 5" x 5".  Inside matting square and quilt square are 3.5" x 3.5".  Quilt strips are 1/2" wide.  Center square is 1" x 1".  This is a variation on the Log-Cabin quilt.  IMG_1249 shows the traditional Log-Cabin design with lights on one corner and darks on the opposite corner.  IMG_1236 shows the cut strips ready to be assembled.  The bottom center card in IMG_1229 used the original design by Annette (has a cutout flower in the center).  The last two photos show stacks of 10 cards each waiting to go out.

 

 

 

If you wish to view a larger image, click on a photo, then select "View full size".  You can also download the original size file from there by right clicking your mouse over the photo and selecting "Copy" or "Save As".

Spring Greeting Cards

As I mentioned on my blog in early April, I wanted to make some Spring-themed greeting cards to send out to my friends, but my craft room needed to be cleaned out first.  Well I made a set of cards now, but it seemed to take full 2 weeks to make 20 of them!  I am averaging 2 cards a day at that rate :(  I have to get faster.  I believe I have come up with some useful design principles and color schemes that I think will be useful on other cards as well.  I am reading the Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird that seems to agree with most of the design principles I use on my cards. I have divided the space into 1/3 and 2/3 portions. The horizontal line also creates a plane, which is a principle used often by Cezanne.  Below is a photo of a representative sample:

The card above was my first prototype.  It kept evolving. I added the flowers on the bottom and the checkered stencil bottom border later. I also drew the eyes inside the cat eye sunglasses.  The eyes took a long time and I needed a magnifying glass.  The best way to draw them is to first draw a thin crescent top across the full width of the sunglasses with a black pencil, and then dot the eyeballs using a thin felt-tip pen. 

 The main stamp is "Paris in the Spring" from Stampin Up. I colored it using Shimmering H2O, which were shiny and easy to apply with a sable brush. Small details were colored with a gel pen or marker pen.  I used 3 sets of alphabets for the sentiment (Curlzy stamps, brad letter stickers, and round dotted stamps).  Air is stamped with Brilliance peacock, which is my favorite inkpad. It also adds shimmering shine. The bottom flowers where attached using my new Xylon 1.5". I used 2 sizes of flower punches to make some of the flowers out of cardstock. Base pink cardstock is from WorldWin.  Their 12" paper is 70 pounds and feels very luxurious.  I like it better than Stampin Up cardstock.  WorldWin's letter size paper is only 65 pounds, and feels about the same as Stampin Up's.

 

This is a later design.  I began to simplify the elements.  I think I like these better.  I skipped attaching the individual brad alphabets with tweezers because they were taking too long.  "Greetings" stamp is one of my favorite from Ken Brown Caligraphy. I also mounted the alphabets for "SPRING" onto a clear acrylic block to be able to stamp it in one motion instead of six. 

I ran out of light pink cardstock so I used a handmade paper from Korea with bark pieces embedded on it.  I really love this paper.  It is much stronger than the generic mulberry paper from the Paper Company, which is a poor quality.  The Paper Company is an excellent source for cardstock, though, and they have the best possible prices.  The burgundy is a bit too dark, but I love their apricot/coral color -- it is the best!

 

I hope to be mailing these out to you with my personal messages in the coming weeks :)

Please don't get mad at me if it takes a long time to arrive.  I AM still working on a website, my StockWiki.com.  I am re-energized after all the crafting and Spring Cleaning during April to get back to work on StockWiki.  I think I know what to do to design the layout now.  Spreadsheet programming will be harder, but I have some ideas from the math side on how it might be implemented.  Cheers, and Happy Spring while it lasts!                   -- Jennifer -- 

I joined the Handmade Cards group pool on Flickr.  There is a HUGE collection of card photos.  You can view all of them either in slide-show mode or just clicking on thumb-nail images.  The thumb-nail size is too smal to see the details.  I prefer the slide-show mode and using next & previous buttons to fast forward or slow down.  Foreign contributions are especially interesting because their styles and methods are unusual in the U.S.  I wish I can write a "thank you" and "so beautiful!" comments on many of them, but I don't know Spanish.  I am afraid of offending the person because I think Spanish has a few related versions (Brazil, Spain, and Mexico). I did not recognize the language, so was not even sure it was Spanish, though I knew it was not Italian or French.  Here is the link to the group pool. http://www.flickr.com/groups/15834567@N00/

I also have some photos of my handmade cards and sewing projects on Flickr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyoon/sets/72157594241093711/ (cards)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyoon/sets/72157594568851553/ (sewing)