Hello! My name is Haley and I’m excited to be sharing with you my paper crafting process here at the CutCardStock blog. I am a designer who believes in handmade crafts as a form of self care as well as an opportunity to hand out little pieces of happiness. Or in some cases, a sympathetic note.
For my first project I made a set of sympathy cards based on the sentiment “sending good vibes.” When people I know are down and out, sending them good energy and letting them know I am thinking of them is never a bad idea. I will be glad to have these on hand to send to loved ones.
I started by creating a bold typographic design for my card in Silhouette Studio, as I knew I wanted to use the Curious Metallic White Gold cardstock for the card front, and cut the sentiment out of it with my Portrait. (You could easily do this with any kind of word die and trim accordingly to fit your card base – you’ll see what I mean.)
I was using A6 Stardream folding cards in Ruby for the base, so I designed the outside of the sentiment in a rectangle at 4in x 5.75in, which ended up leaving a nice border.
I then trimmed panels of Neenah Solar White 80 lb. that I had watercolored with Distress Ink (colors: seedless preserves, lucky clover, and mermaid lagoon) and figured out how to layer my panels with my die-cut pieces.
For one card, I backed the watercolor paper on sticky fun foam and trimmed it flush so it had some nice dimension. Then I used the negative space from the die cut to help me align the letters on the card, gluing with a little detail bottle of Ranger Multi Medium Matte.
You just tape the die cut to the top and use it as a hinge – once you place a letter in the space, lift the hinge to keep it all from getting glued together, and to make sure it’s all straight. Then drop it and place the next letter. Before you know it all the letters are nice and straight, and your card front is ready to be stuck onto the card base!
If you’d like to see more of my process, I have a video on my Youtube channel showing how I did the ink-smooshing techniques to create the watercolor background, and how I finished off the other card by popping it up on foam squares.
I really loved working with these metallic card stocks and how they look with the watercolor texture…What better way to send good energy than with metallics and popping color?
– Haley
FAB!