The Creative Process

One of my goals while I'm home this summer, (I'm a elementary school teacher-librarian) is to work on improving my cardmaking skills. I've been making cards for over two years, but mostly what I do is copy somebody else's idea and make a card to use right away. What I would like to do this summer is do more than make a card. I want to work through the process of creating and work at improving by creating multiple versions of a card. I plan to record my journey on this blog to help me remember the process...

For this card, I started with this idea from Amy Rysavy which I like because it uses up scraps - which I never throw out and it is clean and simple looking which is a style I admire. I don't have that paper, so I used Almost Amethyst, Apricot Appeal, Cool Caribbean, Pretty in Pink, Barely Banana, and Certainly Celery on a Whisper White card base. I guessed at the size of the strips and made them all 0.8" x 4" which in the end makes the card a little bigger than standard 4 1/4" x 5 1/2"size. I started out gluing the strips on my card base, but because I wanted to use a brad and I don't like my brads to show on the inside of my card, I ended up cutting around the glued on strips and gluing that piece on a new card base.

I didn't have the flowers Amy used, but found a cool looking stamp of three flowers that my sister-in-law gave to me that I thought I would try. I also don't have white StazOn ink so I decided to substitute white SU Craft Ink. That created problems one and two.
- Craft Ink does not dry on a transparency - even if you wait 24 hours!
- My flowers did not suit the card.


So, I decided to use my black StazOn ink to stamp on the transparency. I put a Post-It note on both ends of my transparency strip so that when I stamped "friendship", the tails would be shorter, leaving room for flowers on both ends. I goofed the flower that I put to the left of "friendship" so I had to cut it off, which made the transparency too short to go the long way on the card. So I attached it with a black brad through the flower on the right and two sided tape under the Pretty in Pink Ribbon. I was happy, with this card, but thought it really didn't need the transparency so decided to try it again.

For my second attempt, I decided to make the strips slightly thinner so I could make a standard sized card. That was a mistake because it made it difficult for me to get "Celebrate" to fit on the strip. I found it difficult to cut this size of strips from scraps of paper because they slid in my paper cutter (Fiskars Triple Track).

So I decided to go for a third attempt. I went back to the 0.8" x 4" strips. If I was going to make it a fourth time, I would make them 4 1/4" long because I ended up having to trim my base. I had to change Almost Amethyst to Lavender Lace because I didn't have any more Almost Amethyst scraps. After I glued the strips to a piece of flimsy cheap card stock that I'm trying to get rid of, I ran it through my Swiss Dots Cuttlebug folder. I used a piece of SU Cardstock Vellum and embossed Celebrate on it. I attached it with two silver star brads.

While I'm pleased with all three cards, I'm happiest with the third one and glad I took the time to make the "same" card again and again.

Kim

P.S. - This whole blogging thing takes a bit of work and I don't even want to talk about editing pictures!

SU Cardstock - Whisper White, Cool Caribbean, Pretty in Pink, Barely Banana, Certainly Celery, Apricot Appeal, Almost Amethyst, Lavender Lace
SU Window Sheet
SU Stamps - Flower is from Delight in Life, Words are from Wonderful Words
SU Ribbon - 1/4" grosgrain - Pretty in Pink
Ink - Black StazOn, Versamark
Accessories - SU Sterling Silver Emboss Powder; Making Memories Star Brads