New City, New Holiday Card

Despite the fact that we have had some warm weather here in Philly lately, it's beginning to look like Christmas again. We still haven't had a chance to decorate our tree yet, but I've actually completed construction of my cards ahead of schedule this year! I had a lot of time on my hands a month ago, so I really took the opportunity to power through assembly prior to Thanksgiving.

I knew I wanted to use my new city of Philadelphia for a theme, but I really struggled with coming up with this year's design. I didn't have a problem when I did a Chicago-themed card when I first moved to the Windy City, but I really struggled with how to capture the iconic elements of Philly in a holiday card. I had several ideas - tracing the skyline, lights decorating the Liberty Bell, a stylized outline of the LOVE sculpture, but none of them seemed to be quite right.

I finally landed on a design that I thought incorporated the Philly theme in a fun way. The card itself is a riff on a pop-up card that I did a few years ago, but I added a little more design to the front and cut out a bit of work by learning how to trace lines with a razor. 

So, I incorporated two icons of Philly into my card: Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell. I found a little clip art profile of Ben and turned him into a silhouette.

          

My husband randomly got a cute bumper sticker promoting Nutella, so I scanned that image in for the Liberty Bell.

Then I used all the little tree templates from a few years ago to cut out new trees in new patterns. Cheating? Maybe. All the work was still there - the only difference was that I didn't have to re-create the Powerpoint document that I used for the templates.

Creating the backing paper for the popup used to be the most labor intensive part; all that measuring, line-drawing, and cutting is a lot of work. Then I figured out that you can just use one that you've already cut and trace the lines with a razor blade to cut all that pre-work out. Just watch those fingers!

Finally, fold the backing and glue everything together to get the final product.

I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed in this year's design. It lacked the spark of an idea that usually comes to me at some point during the year. Maybe it's because I came into this year with a theme and an agenda and just boxed myself in. Maybe it's because I'm just running out of ideas. In any case, I'm hoping that next year will bring a more fresh and exciting design, but I'll try not to worry about it for now.

Happy holidays!

A Cupcake Christmas

Almost every November, the panic starts to set in. What the heck am I doing for the greeting card this year? And how am I going to get it done with all the craziness over the holidays? As I mentioned a few posts ago, I usually need to have an idea and materials purchased going into Thanksgiving. This year, I came up with that idea almost a year ahead of time. So this year's batch was a piece of (cup)cake. Almost.

If you've read any of my posts before, you pretty much know how the construction process for my greeting cards works. So, I'm turning over a new leaf. Less verbose descriptions, more photos to tell the story.


Fun Nordic holiday paper that I used for my muffin papers:

Beautiful microbeads from Martha Stewart that created the little non-pareil decorations. Note that these do not stick easily to paper, even using a fair amount of glue from a glue pad. I'm fairly sure that they fell apart in the mail and created a mess for those who received them:

Frosting the cupcakes was time consuming and messy.

The working area. This was a multistep process where I, 1.) Cut out the cupcake shapes, 2.) Glued the "paper cups" and the un-decorated cupcake tops to the card, 3.) Put "sprinkles" on almost half of the cupcake tops, and 4.) Glued on the final cupcake tops and then added the "tree-topper". Oh, and then of course I had to delicately write out the cards for fear that all the little micro-beads would fall off.

Work in progress:

 The finished product:

Thinking of Christmas on a 70-Degree Day

This is summer's last hurrah. As I writing this, I'm sitting with tea in hand on my deck in Chicago, and it's about to be one of the last nice days of the year. The forecast says that it's going to be 70 degrees today and the next few days, so I intend to make the most of it. Which is why it's strange that I'm already thinking about Christmas.

Many of you already know that I put out a handmade Christmas card every year. Maybe you noticed that I hadn't posted about last year's card? Well, that's because I didn't start thinking about the darn thing until so late in the year that I was scrambling to get it done.

I originally had an idea that I wanted to do something with a sewn pattern, but I wasn't sure how to really create a nice looking line, how it might damage my sewing machine, or if I would even be able to execute it.

So I decided to stick to a technique I knew would work: good old-fashioned threading a yarn through a hole. I've done this before on one of my first cards but with ribbon. It's the card that's the second from the left in this picture.

So, I came up with the idea of stringing mittens on a clothesline for the theme. Frankly, I was running out of time, and I knew that I didn't have time to screw around with cutting out everything by hand this year. I typically like to buy materials before Thanksgiving and start the heavy construction work over the holiday, if not earlier. Even with the Thanksgiving start, depending on the level of labor, putting together the cards can stretch well into the week before Christmas. (Some people even get their cards around the new year.)

This past year, I didn't even start ideating until right before Thanksgiving, so I knew that I would have to make it simple. In prior years, I frequently cut out shapes by hand after printing them on paper. But I finally decided to join scrapbookers in the 20th century by making use of paper punches. I ordered a tiny mitten punch from some random craft website and hoped that it would turn out to be the right size when it arrived. Luckily, it was, so I proceeded to punch out hundreds of mittens from different pieces of scrap paper I had in my craft drawer.

I used some multicolored yarn and strung them on the card with a little "Happy Holidays" message on each end of the string.

One thing that I'm still not sure was the right decision was to leave the mittens loose on the string instead of knotting them to the string to prevent them from shifting around. How did they arrive in the mail? Were they all clumped or creased or funny-looking by the time they got to the recipients?

All in all, this was not my best card project, but I feel pretty good about how it turned out given time constraints. I have grander plans for this year's card. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll even enter the Paper Source Holiday Card Contest.

Cheater, cheater, Chrysanthemum Eater

I've spent the last few months buried up to my neck in... the New York Times Sunday Crossword! I'm obviously terrible, because I work on it for a while on Sunday and then gradually throughout the week. I'm almost about to break through, though - I've only got one little chunk left to solve from this past Sunday's puzzle. Hooray! Only one week later.


So, creative endeavors have taken a backseat lately. But a few weeks ago, I saw the front cover of the Paper Source catalog and decided that I HAD to have the chrysanthemum wreath featured on it.







So pretty, right?


Paper Source sells these kits that you can assemble yourself. The make it really easy to be creative. Actually, it's so easy, that it feels like cheating. All you have to do is punch the petals out of the pre-cut paper that they provide, curl the petals, and then stick everything together with the tape that they provide. Really, the only decisions you have to make are where to put the flowers and leaves when they are assembled.


That got me to thinking: so much of my creative activities are really just following directions that the real creative people give me? Most of us pull inspiration from elsewhere, but there comes a certain point where it crosses over from "drawing from" to "copying." Where is that line? I'm pretty sure this project is pretty deep into copying territory, but I loved the process (and the result) just the same.

Materials used in this project:

• Paper Source Chrysanthemum kit
• Bone folder

Ho, ho, ho! - Back After a Hiatus!

Hello, again! It seems that I have gotten lazy over the past few months. My creative juices ran dry after only 5 posts... in June?!

Not really. Let me explain and offer some advice. Never take on a large project in something in which you have no confidence. For me, that's writing fiction. I thought it would be fun to try taking on a new version of a chapter of Pride and Prejudice written in a modern tone. Except that I had forgotten how bad I was at writing fiction. Three weeks later, and totally burned out, I was left with a sucky version of HALF of the chapter and had been sapped of any desire to do something creative. For those interested in the text - too bad. That crap will never see the light of day. Working with physical objects is more my speed.

So, I'm back now, doing the things I enjoy! I've been occupying myself for the last month or two with my all-consuming annual project: handmade holiday cards! Typically, this involves a lot of paper, scissors, and glue - and this year hasn't been any different.

First, the design. This is inevitably the most maddening part of the process. Searching for ideas doesn't always work. I usually look through my little card making book, catalogs, magazines... Usually the idea just comes to me: a flash of inspiration (eureka!) in the middle of the day when I'm working on something totally unrelated to greeting cards.

Having been obsessed with Mad Men (including a theme party earlier this year), I drew inspiration from the show and AMC's "Mad Men Yourself" application. I figured that a little 60's style would be fun for my holiday cards. Who doesn't want a Gimlet, skinny tie, or house frock to brighten up the holiday season?

So, I made pictures of a male and female figure with the suit and dress that I liked:


Then I printed those images out on white paper and then cut out the clothing only so I could get a clean silhouette without the other body parts. I scanned the images back onto the computer so I could print them en masse from Powerpoint directly onto the red paper I was using. (This year's card was designed to be made mostly from leftover paper from previous years. If any of you do arts and crafts, you know what I mean. I am sick of having random paper scraps lying around the house!)


Snip, snip! Dresses and suits in red!

I used organdy ribbon to create a ruffle at the bottom of the dress. Despite my horrific freehand sewing skills, I gathered the organdy ribbon with a needle and thread to make a bunch of little ribbon lengths. I then sewed them onto the bottom of each dress to create a raised "hem." It's surprisingly difficult to create a length of ribbon the same length as a piece of paper unless you're measuring against it every second.

Cut velvet ribbon was used for the trim around the red suit jacket. I glued the ribbon to the jacket and then trimmed with scissors for a custom tailor job. Santa needs to look as slim for the big night!

I freehand drew some Santa hats. I have to tell you that Santa hats can look weird if you don't get the droopiness just right.

Sticking everything to the card and finishing it off with a "Merry Christmas" stamp is where the relief sets in for me. Sadly, I was a little indecisive this year about how I wanted things positioned, so there were a few versions as I have shown below, a few versions where the couple look like they are toasting each other, and a few versions with crooked stamp placement. (I should add that the stamp is totally optional in the case of non-religious friends. Unfortunately, I may have already offended with the Santa theme. Oh, well.)

Voila! It's a swingin' 60's Santa with his Mrs. Claus. Times 40 cards. Equals a lot of time devoted to cards instead of holiday shopping.

This year's design is definitely not my favorite. Aren't we always our own harshest critics? Below is a lineup of my work over the years. I loooove my paper.


The bottom three are "Christmas Surprises:"



Materials used for this project:

• Clothing design from "Mad Men Yourself"
• Needle and thread
• White organdy ribbon
  
• White velvet ribbon
• White pompons
• Sharp paper scissors
• Paper, A2 and A4 cards and envelopes from Paper Source
• Glue

Final note: Until I put together the full lineup, I didn't realize that I have been making these cards for the past eight holiday seasons. Time flies, as evidenced by my long absence. I hope that everyone out there has had a great 2009; cheers to an even better, more creative 2010!

Profile Picture

As I may have mentioned, I am not the greatest artist. I like being creative, but it's not like I was getting A's in art class. (The blog is called creative dribble, not artistic dribble.)

Once, I sketched a sculpture of a woman at the Art Institute in Chicago. Everything was basically fine until I got to the feet. Picture a 6 foot tall lady with size 3 feet. Proportions are tough!

That's why I love technology, which allows even the worst freehand drawer to achieve a level of accuracy on nose size, eye placement, and lip fullness that may have been completely out of reach before.

This week's project is a project for my guest bathroom. Again, I got my inspiration from that same Martha Stewart Living article that inspired my bench project. There was a small picture above a couch with their silhouettes cut out. A very cute way to illustrate their small family tree:

I loved the idea of the "love sihouette," so I decided to make one of myself and Chris for our guest bathroom. You start by taking a digital picture of your profile against a light background, like so:


Then, I took the intermediate next step of importing the image into MS Paint so I could color in the body of the photo and white out the background to get a preliminary read on what the silhouette would look like. I think that this step is a little unnecessary if you are confident in your profile decisions, but it was helpful for me in order to get the details of exactly how a chin or nose should look, or how the strands of hair should stand on the head.

Then, in order to get the cutout details just right, I cut out a smaller model of the silhouette so I could figure out exactly how the details would cut prior to the final version. Again, probably an extraneous step, but for those who lack confidence, it works pretty well:

Then, I used my scanner and powerpoint to blow up the image to the actual size I wanted:

Finally, I taped the silhouette to a black sheet of paper (from Paper Source, of course) and traced the silhouette to the back of the paper with a pencil. I had to be careful here to make sure the faces would be facing each other when I traced the picture, so I had to tape the sihouette on backwards for one of the images because we were both facing the same way when I took the picture.

I determined the size in part by the space I wanted to fill on the wall. It was tough to imagine life-sized floating heads on the wall, but anything smaller just didn't take up enough room. I found these great 12" x 12" LP album frames at CB2 that were just the right size and simple profile for what I wanted. They also had the advantage of having a glass back so I could have a floating image if I wanted it.

Now, for the mounting. I originally wanted to use a white or very light colored background for the backing, but when I got to the store, a lot of the papers I found were too "cute" or modern. I was looking for a bit more of a retro modern (modernized Victorian?) feel to the bathroom to match the bedroom. I finally found this cool transparent film with a silver damask-like pattern that provided the right feel, and would even let the pink wall behind it show through.

I glued the silhouette to the front of the transparent paper, and here is the final result:

Voila! Silhouette for the drawing challenged. They're no longer just the domain of the artists at Disney. It's a much easier project than I imagined. Give it a try if you have the chance!

Materials used for this project:

• A willing participant
  
• Digital camera
• Small craft scissors - sharp ones!
• Pencil
  
• Scanner
• Crate and Barrel LP Album Frame
• 8.5" x 11" text weight black paper from Paper Source
• 12" x 12" background paper - transparent with brocade design
  
• Glue
  

A Personal Touch

It's never good when you have to start a conversation with your husband, "Okay, don't be mad." Especially when it's your anniversary.

Some of you may know that I design my own greeting cards. This week, I decided to create a card for my dearest husband. We have been married for 5 years, and in addition to the delicious cookie bouquet from Cookies by Design, I wanted to do something a little personal.

My biggest project is holiday greeting cards, and I usually start planning in early to mid-October in order to have everything to created by the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I only had about an hour for this project.

I decided to create a card for Chris that celebrates our five years together with the traditional materials for each of the years. I don't think anyone actually know these things offhand, so I went to look them up on Wikipedia:

1st anniversary: Paper
2nd anniversary: Cotton
3rd anniversary: Leather
4th anniversary: Linen / Silk
5th anniversary: Wood

Luckily, I basically had all these materials on hand. I used the a piece of white copy paper, a little piece of a cotton square, the trimming from a double-sided leather belt of Chris that needed to be sized down, and a tiny piece of mulch. "What about the linen or silk?" you ask...

I thought I had a little piece of leftover silk from a dress that I had tailored. It turns out that you should never count on finding something that you haven't seen in about a year.

What to do?!

I took Chris' favorite pair of linen pants and cut a tiny bit out of the seam. Eek! I'm sure he'll never even notice.

I used a purple card that I had leftover from a prior batch of greeting cards. I pasted all 5 items on the cover of the card to represent the 5 years we've been together.

I made a little engagement and wedding ring for decoration of the inside of the card along with the anniversary wishes.

Lastly, the magic ingredient that gave it a personal touch was the red and gold paper I used for the little plus and equal signs in my design. I used scraps from the paper we used for the escort cards at our wedding.

Here's the result:


Yes, it's pretty amateur looking and obviously homemade. It's certainly not my best design, and I wouldn't even really call it good looking. The plus signs look like they were made by a first-grader, especially since they didn't even end up as the same size! (I can't tell you how difficult it is to cut right angles with plus signs that small.) But I love the fact that I was able to make something for Chris and make it really personal. Maybe he was just lying, but he said that it was his favorite card that I've made. He didn't even mind that his pants were missing a tiny chunk. Mission accomplished.

Materials used for this project:

• Lavender A4 card and pearlized envelope from Paper Source
• Silver paper from Paper Source
  
• Vellum (for the engagement ring)
  
• Office Paper
  
• Cotton Square
• Leather Belt
• Linen Pants
• Mulch
• Scissors
• A quarter, nickel, and penny to trace the outlines for the rings