My First Card Project

Here it is.  My first card project.

It took WAY longer than a trip to the Hallmark store, but in the end, I think it was worth it (although my perfectionistic tendencies keep pointing out every error I made along the way).

Envelope - Front

 

Envelope - Back

The basic envelope was cut using SCAL.  I found an awesome svg file for it and have to give thanks and credit to The Frugal Crafter whose blog also appears here on WordPress.  (You can download it here, and while you’re at it, take time to check out her blog.  She’s incredibly talented.)

When you open the file in SCAL, it appears on the cutting mat very small — much smaller than what I wanted, so I resized it.  Of course, I screwed something up in the process so that when I folded the edges I had a little hole in the middle instead of the nice tight-fitting envelope that appears on The Frugal Crafters blog.  Crap!  But I didn’t want to waste an entire sheet of the paper I’d picked for this project (paper ain’t free, ya’ know), so I simply cut the file a second time at the size it imports into SCAL and then cut a second one slighter larger from a color-coordinated plain cardstock.  I then glued the little patterned piece to the little cardstock piece, folded in three sides of the envelope, dabbed a bit of Zig glue on the area where those three edges met, and stuck my little embellishment right on it.  I left one side of the embellishment unglued so that it acts as a holder for the envelope flap.  Idiocy is the mother of invention — at least in my scrap space it is.

I cut two daisys cut from Cricut’s Plantain Schoolbook Collection cartridge to embellish the front of the envelope and thought I’d attach them with a heart shaped brad.  Only one problem.  I should have attached them BEFORE I glued the envelope flaps together.  So I tacked them onto a little square of paper and then glued the square onto the front of the envelope.  Live, create, learn.  I also attached a little vellum tag, wrapping the cord around the base of the flower so it didn’t show and dabbed a bit of Zig glue along the metal edges so it’d stay in place.  I then added the recipients name to the tag using Alphabitties from Provo Craft.  (I “erased” the name in Photoshop before I uploaded it to this blog — protect the innocent and all that good jazz.)

Card Front

A second problem that I created when I screwed up the resizing of the envelope is that it was too big for a 6×6 card.  I needed a 6 1/2×6 1/2 card.  Unfortunately, no matter how I cut a sheet of 12×12 paper, I cannot get a 6 1/2×6 1/2 card.  So I cut a strip of paper 6 1/2×12 and folded it so that the front of the card was shorter than the back of the card.  I then applied a sticker ribbon that came with the paper pack to the inside bottom of the card so that if you didn’t know any better, you’d think I’d done it on purpose.  Like I said, idiocy is the mother of invention.

I attached three stickers that came with the paper pack and embellished them with more of the little heart brads that I used on the front of the envelope. 

Finally, it came time to do the lettering.  What a pain in the  an opportunity to exercise my self control.  Once again I used SCAL.  One of my favorite fonts is Inspiration (available from My Fonts), but it’s a skinny font, and one that can be a bit difficult to work with once cut.  I cut one in normal mode and one in shadow mode.  I had to do a bit of resizing and moving the letters around to get it too look the way I wanted, so to save you some time, you can get the scut file for the normal font here, and you can get the scut file for the shadow here. 

Once I had both the normal and the shadow fonts cut, I just had to glue them together.  Like I said, Inspiration is a skinny font, and the normal font was difficult to get off my cutting mat.  Be very careful.  Also the first time I cut it, the cut didn’t go all the way through my cardstock.  I increased the pressure of my blade (from medium to high) and cut it a second time.  That did the trick.  The shadow was much easier to work with, mainly because I was able to weld most of the letters together.  I dabbled Zig glue on the top of the shadow cut and then placed the normal cut on top.  I then glued that to the front of the cardstock.

One problem I found is that the Zig glue kept drying on my fingertips and picking up lint from who knows where (probably from my jeans where I kept wiping them) and I found that I was getting little balls of dark gunk on my letters.  Not cool when I’d so painstakingly pried them from the mat without destroying them.  So now I know I need to either keep a box of baby wipes on my desk or find some other sort of glue to use.  If you’ve any suggestions, please please please let me know.

A quick list of materials I used for this card are:

• Sure Cuts A Lot program
• svg file from The Frugal Crafter for the envelope
• Cricut cartridge Plantain Schoolbook Collection
• Coordinating cardstock, patterned paper, and stickers from the David Walker Studios Super Slab by ProvoCraft
• Heart brads by Making Memories
• Inspiration font
• Vellum tag
• Alphabitties by ProvoCraft

Like I said, it took WAY longer than a trip to Hallmark, but it was WAY more fun.  And since this is my first real attempt at card making and I’m still learning my way around in SCAL, I don’t think it turned out too terribly awful.

Hope you enjoy my project, and please please please feel free to email me with any suggestions or recommendations you may have.

As always…

Happy Cricut-ing!!!