Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Giant Spiral Card

I have been eyeing the Fold-it card templates from Paper Wishes for quite some time, so when I saw the spiral template on sale for $1 I snapped it up right away. I wasn’t sure how I would like the template because it seemed like there was a lot of tracing and cutting involved, but it turned out to be quite easy to use.

Here is my first card.

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I made it for my niece’s graduation. Inside, I put a verse from the Bible on each of the petals and an inspirational poem in the middle. Of all of the giant fold-it templates, I think this one has the most room in the center for writing.

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The template also comes with a pattern for a small spiral, plus templates for tags and decorative dots and swirls. I know I will be using this one quite a bit!

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Graduation Card for My Nephew

My youngest nephew graduated from high school this year.  How time flies!  Cards for guys have always been a struggle for me, so I turned to the May issue of Cardmaker magazine for some inspiration and found the perfect pattern.  The only problem was that I didn’t have the die cuts for the diploma or the graduation hat, nor did I have the stamp for the wording.

What to do?  Make my own templates, of course!  I wanted the graduation hat and the diploma to be embossed, so using a coffee can lid, I created my own embossing stencils.  It was really pretty easy as the plastic cuts very easily with an X-acto knife.  Just draw the design and cut it out.  Here’s my stencil.

stencil 

The only marginally tricky part was the swirl on the end of the diploma.

I used my cuttlebug to emboss the cap (Plate A + plate B + stencil + paper + 2 Nestabilities embossing pads + plate B).  It turned out really well.  I finished it off by adding a black brad and a tassle, which I made from black, orange and gold embroidery floss.

capdetail

The diploma didn’t  emboss well in the cuttlebug.  The paper kept tearing around the swirl, so I used an embossing tool instead.  I finished it off with a gold outline (sorry, I didn’t get a good picture of that).

Next came the wording.  I found a font that I liked and created it on my computer.  Next, I printed it out and then put it on my light box so I could trace it onto some off-white paper.  This is a tricky way to make people think I can actually write well. :)

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the results.

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