Covered in Glitter and Screaming

My illustration pen pal loaned me another Griffin and Sabine book, and I returned it with a handmade card. This one plays around with the format, and features an octopus holding a message in a bottle. Process video: I ended up making several of these, but I think I want to go back and adjust the design a bit. I love the look of the suckers being cut from the front piece of paper to reveal the back, but the finer details are hard for the Cricut to handle without tearing. This card also doesn't fit into a standard envelope. The plan is to make at least one alternate version of this concept that is easy to replicate, to be added to my (brand new!) Etsy store , which currently features kokeshi doll cards .

I was commissioned to make two stencils (2 feet wide and 4 feet wide) and to hand paint a 2' wooden sign. Design I ended up combining characteristics from three different versions of the fraternity crest design to make the client's ideal version, and then I converted it to a single color graphic with added support bars for when it was cut out of the final material. Reference images from https://oppf.org/ , theshieldmaker , and wallpaperuse.com Stencils There was significant research and experimentation with different ways to physically produce the stencil. Maker spaces did not offer a work space large enough to produce the stencil at either of the final sizes (2 feet in diameter or 4 feet in diameter) and generally focused on laser cutting, which is a bad idea for most types of plastic. Ultimately I opted to produce it at home with my Cricut. Materials testing: this is not the right kind of plastic N OTE TO CRICUT USERS: 1mm plastic is too thick and acrylic thicker than a trans...

I made two waterfall cards with very different visual flavors. Both are adaptations from one of these tutorials from Mixed Up Craft , but with different proportions so I needed a few prototypes to get all the math right. The first one was for a sakura-themed baby shower. Nearly everything on my friend's registry was already spoken for other than a gift card, so to give that a more personal presentation I made the waterfall card. Here's the final! If you want to see my trial and error, here's the process: The second one was the original goal, but harder to implement because of the dimensions of the cards. This is, however, the more clever card because it was given to a magician, and there's a classic card flourish called a waterfall. So this is a waterfall card made of a waterfall of cards! Final product (minus the outer shell): Prototype plus final:

My holiday cards for 2021 were inspired by Japanese kokeshi dolls , modified from the version I made for a pen pal earlier in the year. SO excited to finally have an excuse to use some of this gorgeous handmade Japanese paper! I'd had my eye on that green pattern since the first time I laid eyes on it. Bonus, I also found good holiday colors (for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's) and a pattern appropriate for the Year of the Tiger. The process is pretty straightforward: sketch what the final should look like (or, in this case, lift from a previous project to modify) trace into vector shapes in design software, resize to fit into regular-postage envelope (black rectangle). The lines are instructions for the Cricut – the gold lines are to be drawn with a gold marker, the magenta lines are for cutting a slot for the obi (waist sash) to slide through, and the vertical cyan lines are score lines for folding. I make 50-60 cards every year, I want to make sure they're as consi...

 My illustration pen pal loaned me another  Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it with a card holder inspired by modern kokeshi dolls . Process the process almost always starts with a sketch Some math was done to determine how big the finished doll should be then the sketch was traced and I used a grid to enlarge the sketch to the final size using the new drawing, I split out the individual pieces to be cut out The body (red) is cut from craft foam, the other pieces are cut from paper The patterned paper at the bottom is usually used for origami Front and back of assembled doll Front and back of finished doll holding the folded letter

My illustration pen pal loaned me another  Griffin and Sabine book , and I returned it with a letter and a puzzle. I already had a mandala design from a workshop years ago, so I started there. I made some tweaks and printed it out to decide what the colors should be like. Thanks to radial symmetry, I could get four different looks on the same sheet. Top: white background, rainbow shapes on left and metallics on right Bottom: black/white shapes on rainbow background left, metallic background right  Puzzles are made of chipboard (what hardcover books use, a little more hardcore than a cereal box) Let's feed that into the Cricut and see what happens Good news: the Cricut can handle drawing all the lines at this size, and it will successfully cut out all those puzzle shapes Bad news: all those frayed edges are not gonna work for me Second attempt: puzzle re-drawn and re-cut on two sheets of cover stock glued together instead of chipboard. A little less solid, but much smoother! An...

To celebrate Husband's birthday this year, I made a card, a booze tower, and whisky caramel cupcakes. Card Keeping with a black/white/red motif, I designed the words Happy Birthday into the outline of a tumbler with red card stock whisky and tracing paper ice cubes. When the card is closed it appears full, when the card is open it appears empty. Tower I probably looked like a madwoman in the store, picking up bottles to compare the heights and arranging them in my shopping basket to see how they looked next to each other. The bottom layer is the bulkier bottles, with foam and cardboard spacers to make most of them the same height. lower layer practice arrangement most of the bottles were different heights luckily I had a lot of foam, cardboard, and duct tape on hand approved arrangement Final version with ribbons and bows Cupcakes I am by no means a baker, but I made these whisky caramel cupcakes and they actually turned out fine! Surprised the heck out of me. So much dairy, thoug...

I found tutorial videos for this card and a square envelope and made my own.  For the design, I started with the words "Live Laugh Love" and kept going with other words that begin with L. Design I did some math so that the folded shapes would be the right size to be mailed with regular postage within the US and rounded down so each segment was easy to measure, then made a template in Illustrator. The top shape is the card, the bottom shape is the envelope. Magenta lines are for cuts, cyan lines are for folds. I traced each facet between the fold lines to get shapes I can cut from bright paper and glue to the white base In Cricut Design Space I added the text to these panels (it will only allow me to use a limited number of fonts as fonts instead of outlined shapes, which is a constant irritant to me as a designer) Production All-white prototype with rough word panel placement (also where I discovered that I forgot to create word shapes for two panels so I had to go back and...