My Experiences in Making Cards for Operation Write Home

I thought I might share some of my experiences and lessons learned while making cards for OWH.  I have set a goal of making 100 cards a month and keeping to that schedule has allowed me to understand some simple truths for myself.  In not particular order I will talk about budget, the creative process, the assembly process, and keeping up with needed stock items (papers, adhesives, inks, etc.).

How much money one chooses to spend making cards is is highly personal.  Since my own goal is for 100 cards per month, I have decided to forgo lots of little bits and adornments and stay with cleaner, simpler layouts.  That means I don't have to buy lots of buttons, flowers, ribbon, and bling.  $$$ Savings!  With the Cricut Imagine, my primary expenses are paper, cutting mats, blades, and ink (it prints and cuts). Other than my Cricut, expenses include tape, glue and envelopes. Secondary expenses include enhancements like stick-on jewels and pearls, ink pads, some rubber stamps, paper punches, corner rounders, and ribbon.  Throw in craft knife blades, paper trimmer blades, markers, and a bone folder or two and you have the bare bones of what is needed.

In one months time I will go through a minimum of  80 8.5x11 sheets of paper, 100 sheets of 12x12 paper, 2 36yd rolls of 3M ATG tape, 3 cassettes of Mono tape, 2 Zig 2 Way glue pens, 15 yards of 3M foam tape, 2 Cricut cutting blades, 2 Xacto #11 blades, 2 Cricut cutting mats, 100 envelopes, and 2 paper trimmer blades.

However, money is not the only item that must be budgeted.  Creating, printing, assembling, stamping, gluing, taping, and wrapping all take time.  A simple card might look like it took no time at all, but it can include elements that have 4-5 small paper layers that had to be individually cut, glued,  taped, and assembled.  Some of these can take much more time than anticipated.  If I can find a general layout that works with three or four different elements using the same color scheme, then I can produce three or four sets of ten or twelve cards without too much trouble.  When I really get a rush on, like when I made a quick batch of cards for kids, I spent 4 10-12 hour days getting it all done.  You wouldn't think it took that long by looking at them, but those cards had more bits and pieces and layers than my usual cards.  I usually do cards several days at a time in batches and I can get twenty or thirty done in about 3 8-10 hour days.

I really enjoy that sense of satisfaction when I package up the cards for shipment.  After that box goes out, I tidy up my crafting table and get ready for the month's batch of cards.

September 11 - In Rememberance

September 11, 2010

Today most of us will think back to the morning of September 11, 2001 when unimaginable acts of terrorism changed our sense of security. This simple post is in honor of the 2,752 innocent civilians and public service members who died that day. You are remembered.

My Pink Stamper Challenge

Robyn over on My Pink Stamper mypinkstamper.com issued a lovely challenge today. Make a card for a service member (any type of service from which you benefit) or teacher. This worked out great for me as I have been working on cards to send to troops serving overseas. Operation Write Home helps heroes keep in touch with home. How appropriate that I should receive my self inking OWH stamp today!

This is a card I am sending to the troops as a thank you. I don't know who will read the note, but I hope they know how much their sacrifice means to us all.

Rubber Stamping for Cards

As I've said before, I enjoy making handmade cards. Many years ago I used to really enjoy rubber stamping, but one thing led to another and I moved away from the hobby. As my children grew, my crafting room was dismantled and became one of their bedrooms. We (my husband) decided to donate all of my crafting gear (stamps, inks, embossing plates and tools, heat tools, paints and more) for a tax deduction. Now, 15 years later I find myself inching back into rubber stamping as a way to decorate my cards and possibly some polymer clay.

Times have changed quite a bit. Back in the day, all the rubber stamps you found in the stores were red rubber mounted onto wood. Only the "hard-core" stampers bought unmounted stamps or carved their own. Nowadays, the local craft stores carry unmounted stamps in both rubber and clear polymer. To top it off, they cling via static cling to clear acrylic blocks. Now stampers can actually see where they are stamping. No more close enough guess work! Sure beats carefully cutting around the rubber image, cutting foam pad to match and then gluing the whole think to a wood mount with rubber cement.

My first sets are called See-D's stamps. They come in a nice plastic case with an index page of the images and some extra static cling. They are made of purple rubber - kinda cool. They are deeply etched making a nice, clear stamping. If you don't want to buy acrylic blocks you can certainly use the sturdy case. I think you could construct an entire layout for the front of your card by placing multiple stamps on the lid and then ink them with pads or markers.

Enough talk, here is a link to the company web site: http://www.goinque.com/asp/product/

Quick Card for the Artistically Impaired

Here is a quick card I put together today more as an experiment than anything else. I will be the first to admit I have little to no artistic ability. However, that doesn't prevent me from enjoying making cards. They may not be the most elaborate or beautiful cards, but they are mine.

Anyway, I wanted to give you a quick overview of how I made this so you can see how simple it is. The dragon is from a store-bought card I already had. I wanted to match the colors in the picture, so I used brown and a deep yellow card stock. For the inside I used a cream text weight paper.

I usually work with 8.5 x 11 paper and cut it in half width-wise to give me two 5.5 x 8.5 pieces. When folded this gives you two 4.25 x 5.5 cards. Pretty standard note card size and easy to find envelopes for if you don't want to make your own.

Once I trimmed my card to the size I wanted (3.5 x 4.5 I think) I cut the brown card stock so that it would create about an 1/8 inch border around the card. I ran both the card front and the brown card stock through my Xyron 510 (you could also use glue stick or other adhesive). I stuck the card to the brown card stock but left the wax paper backing on the card stock. I recently got a Cuttlebug and used one of my dies to cut a decorative square. I removed the cutout pieces and then cut the square into 4 equal pieces to form the corners. If you don't have anything like that, you could use photo corners, paper triangles, or use nothing at all.

Peeling away a bit of the Xyron wax paper, I positioned my corner pieces at each corner and pressed to join to the card stock. Once all four corners were done I flipped the stack over and applied an adhesive to the exposed undersides of the corners. I then removed the wax paper and attached the stack to the card. A tiny drop of super glue to the end of a toothpick helped me secure the corner pieces to the front of the dragon image. I then got some golden mica powder and lightly rubbed it along the edges of the dragon image and brown card stock border. Gives the whole thing a slight glimmer that isn't too obvious yet adds an extra dimension to the card. My photo doesn't show this well, but when you do your card, you will see what I mean.

Now, go get your card or photo and paper together and make a card for a family member who would enjoy the time you spent making them a little something special.

Handmade Cards

As I have mentioned before, I really enjoy working with paper. It can be used in so many interesting ways and there are some truly beautiful papers available. For special people and special occasions, I like to make a card. I like that a handmade card lets the recipient know they are important enough that some thought and time went into crafting a card just for them. I feel like I need to relearn a lot of things now that card making is part of my life again. There are some terrific books with directions on how to construct some pretty fancy pop-up cards and the like. I hope to get to that level of proficiency but for now, I need to work on composition, color coordination and kicking things up a notch. There are a ton of tools and bling out there that one can buy but I want to dig in with some sheets of paper, some good scissors, a craft knife, and some glue. Once I get a few cards made I'll be able to look at them and decide what I like and dislike. For your viewing pleasure, here are a few card sites that I have recently visited.

Linsy is really good! http://www.geocities.com/linsy57/Cards-Gallery.html
Paper Crafts magazine provides step-by-step projects. Even lists materials needed. http://www.papercraftsmag.com/projects/project.ihtml?content_id=1516&cat_idx=61
Michaels always has lots of projects available. http://www.michaels.com/art/online/search?pageNumber=1&channel=12&search=yes&searchWords=Holiday%20Card&type=4&cm_ven=2007PaperCraftsPg&cm_ite=Cards
Joann.com does too. http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog.jsp?CATID=cat613848&PRODID=xprd367841

What are you waiting for? Grab some paper, scissors, and glue and make your best friend a card today!