Crafty Types

Still in a mood to combine crafting with typography, following on from my Thank You! and January Blues entries for the Get Funky! challenges, and building on the huge inspiration from Simon Garfield's book Just My Type. As planned when I made the thank you card, I adapted the mini tags design for February birthday cards for my mother and two of my friends.

The colour combinations were inspired by Funky Hand Papercraft Factory CDs again: the spotty designer papers from the Blissful Baby collection on the Colour Me Happy CD and the Come What May collection on the Craft the Year Away CD. I used colouriser software to produce plain papers matching the main colours and found co-ordinating pearlescent card and eyelets from my stash, along with thin black waxed cord.

I had such fun looking through the fonts I had recently collected from Urban Fonts to choose just the right ones for each name. They include Times New Romance, Type Block, a Papa, Algerian, An Akronism and Curlz. I struck really lucky when stumbling across Anonymous Clippings, which was perfect for the sentiment.

Most enjoyable though these cards were to make, they were fiddly and time-consuming, although I was faster when doing two together and having learned from the experience of the thank you card. They are certainly quite busy, especially as they are only A6 in size. I am really pleased with the results, which is almost exactly how I envisaged, although I am struggling with a word or phrase to describe their style. There are elements of shabby chic, with the Kraft card, colours of the Mummy card, eclectic fonts, inked edgings and doodling. But the colours of the Hazel and Karen cards seem rather too lively for this description … and remind me of how an ex-boyfriend described my favoured kind of pop music as jangly. So, in the absence of anything better, I'll settle for jangly shabby chic for now. I think I'll be making more to this design … for people with names of a suitable length.

I also used the Times New Romance font for my brother and sister-in-law's initials on their anniversary card, which might become the basis for several other anniversary cards this year. Again, it uses a Funky Hand designer paper: this time from the Minty Madness collection. The charm embellishment was made from leather cord and beads that were lurking in my stash. I moved away from shabby chic to something rather cooler and more sophisticated (I hope), and used holographic mirror card, which I think works well with the Funky Hand papers. I struggled with how many little heart gems to put in the bottom right hand corner. For an anniversary card, two seemed to be the appropriate number, but I gave in to the pull of the crafters rule of three and think the balance is better for it.

January Blues

When I started thinking about this month's Get Funky! January Blues challenge, I still had last month's Thank You! challenge in mind, particularly the typography that Anice had used on the freebie paper.  I wanted to include the letters of Happy Birthday in individual circles and spent a very happy hour or so hunting online for just the right type to use until I stumbled across 4 Yeo In (from Urban Fonts), which seemed perfectly suited to my plan.

For once, I didn't use the freebie designer paper - although, of course, I have stashed it away for just the right rainy day! - but instead chose two papers from the Birthday Boy collection on the Funky Hand Papercraft Factory Happy Happy Birthday CD.  I manipulated one of them in the Workspace on the CD to have the same design in two different sizes and used another graphics package to colour match the sentiment to the backing paper.

Having printed the sentiment, I commenced upon the time-consuming process of cutting out the letters using a Nestability and my Cuttlebug.  Since there were thirteen letters to cut, I had hoped to be able to use a punch, which would have been soooo much quicker, but didn't have one in the right size.  I was able, though, to use one to cut out the backing circles to give a narrow darker blue border.  Then it was on to the fun messy task of inking the edges of all those little circles and layering them up.  I used a border punch to produce some paper lace and made a 1 cm paper ribbon.  I originally tried layering a circle in the centre of the card but it seemed to take up too much space so I swapped it for a square.  More edge inking and layering followed and I was then ready for assembly.

I chose little buttons over paper flowers for the embellishments and decided not to add thread through their holes, as it looked overly busy.  For the same reason, I put the three colours of the buttons in the same order on each corner, as I couldn't make a random arrangement of them look random.

Since it was obvious what the sentiment said (I hope!), I decided that it would be fun to arrange the letters in a bit of a haphazard manner, which helped a lot as the two words are of such different lengths, and mounted the circles on 1 mm foam pads to give a bit of depth.

IMHO, at least, a simple, pleasing (and certainly blue) card, that could be sent to a guy or a girl, although I'll probably go for the former … and, amazingly, finished, blogged and entered well before the challenge deadline.  That gives me plenty of crafting time to devote to some birthday cards that I've been itching to make, based on my Thank You! challenge design, with the recipient's name in place of the original sentiment.  Should work well, I think, at least for those with short names! And, luckily and very obligingly, that's exactly what my friends and family with February birthdays have.  Watch this space.

Thank You!

I loved the Funky Hand freebie backing paper that Anice designed for this month's Get Funky! Thank You! challenge as soon as I saw it in mid-December. I had intended to get going on my card straightaway … but find myself (probably not for the last time) posting my entry with not much more than 24 hours to go to the deadline. I'd like to attribute the delay to great creative processes but the truth is that a firm idea of how I wanted my card to look only came to me yesterday. Happily, this was one of those occasions when the transition from design concept to realisation was smooth, speedy and straightforward. The basis of the card has come out looking much as I saw it in my mind … and the finishing touches that can only happen in the actual making process all worked well (IMHO, at least).

My first printing of the backing paper produced a very poor facsimile of the digital original with dull insipid colours … but once I'd replaced the yellow cartridge on my printer (clearly, one can to too far in trying to use the very last dregs. To be fair, the warning's been there for at least two months), all the gorgeous vibrancy was revealed. Having cut out the tiles for the eight letters of "Thank You", I am left with enough on the single sheet to make at least three more cards. I inked the edges of each tile with a very faded black chalk ink and, finding that I very much liked the combination of pastel and black, went on to freehand doodle on them all with a very fine black pen. I cut backing tags from scraps of co-ordinating pearlescent cardstock and ink edged them as well. I used my lovely lime green Crop-A-Dile (one of my favourite craft tools) to punch little holes and secure a pastel eyelet in each. I tried to be as random as possible with the colour combinations of tiles, tags and eyelets.

I have thought for a while that Funky Hand papers would go really well with Kraft cards and the shabby chic style that was developing seemed to provide the ideal opportunity to try out the combination. To attach the letter tags to the card, I used short lengths of fine waxed black cotton cord, secured with little layered flowers punched from the same pearlescent card, leaving the ends loose to add to the casual style. Ink edging the flowers and their centres was somewhat fiddly and time-consuming, but without it they looked too "clean" alongside the ink edged letter tiles and tags. I found rolling them over the surface of the pad to be effective, although it was also good at getting ink on my fingers, face and the cat. Never mind, it washed off me pretty easily and the cat didn't seem to mind the taste of ink as she attended to herself. I used 1 mm foam pads for the flowers, which gave the tags a chance to move a little. I had intended to use the letter tags on their own, and originally arranged the "You" on the right side of the card. I quite liked the effect, but it looked a little stark, which didn't seem in keeping with the sentiment, so I made a few extra flowers - and, of course, got inky all over again in the process. Surely, the best crafting is the messiest? The extra flowers were grouped and mounted on a combination of 1 mm and 2 mm foam pads on either side of the centred "You".

I usually have someone in mind when I make a card, even for a challenge, but didn't on this occasion. I'm hoping, however, with a birthday coming up in just a few days, that I might be able to use it very soon … So, first card and challenge of 2012 most enjoyably completed; here's to plenty more.