Thank You Card

I decided a thank you card was a good stock card that is useful to a lot of people. For this one, I started with making the background paper. This was actually created using my first seamlessly tiling pattern. I started with drawing the flower and swirl pattern in Illustrator and then colored them in Photoshop and created the tile. For the words, I had originally envisioned them as hung on a clothes line with clothes pins holding them on, but that idea quickly changed to being machine sewn to the card. I enjoyed working with all the fun, bright colors of the letter papers.

For this one, I took the plunge and sent it off to a offset printer to print a gazillion rather than just a few at the local copy store. I think they turned out really nice. They are printed on a high quality cover paper with a glossy finish on the front. The printing is very sharp. I had nightmares about having uploaded files wrong so that the inside was turned the wrong way, but they came back looking perfect. Another nice part of the offset printer was the inside could be full color. So, if anyone needs Thank You cards, message me with how many you need and I can give you a price quote. They will be about 50 cents a piece. If you need a whole bunch, we can work out a lower price.

Feminine Birthday Card

After completing my rainbow trout birthday card, I decided to make one that was more feminine. I struggled with inspiration on this one. I started with a picture of the first rose that bloomed on a rose bush my husband planted at our new house. The picture had turned out beautiful, but the rose just didn't fit with the paper. I'm not sure why not, but it looked out of place. I tried blending it in with various artistic filters and framing it, but nothing really helped enough. So, the rose got cut--hopefully you'll see it on a future project.

While still working with the rose, I started playing around with the pressed tin action from atomiccupcake.com. I love this action. It creates the most fun elements. It was such a fun element that I decided to make it the main focus of the card instead of the rose. Here is the result.

Birthday Card for Men

I tried to design a birthday card for a man that had both a scrapbook style, but masculine. My father loves to fish and he taught me to enjoy it as well, so I was inspired by a picture of a trout. I first started by drawing just a picture of a trout like you'd see in a textbook--inanimate and boring. I didn't like the result. Then, I got the idea of a trout jumping out of the frame to bite a dry fly. My new trout was so much more animated and alive. Here is the end result. Thanks to my sister Carrie for her great feedback! I hope you like it.

Pressed Tin Birth Announcements

I created two new birth announcements. This time, I decided to do them with a scrapbook style. They feature torn paper edges and pressed tin embellishments. Colors can be easily customized and the photos feature an almost black and white photo and a sepia photo. Photos can be altered to be full color, black and white, sepia, or anything in between.