Covered in Glitter and Screaming

To celebrate the changing of the Chinese zodiac animal from rabbit (2022) to dragon (2023) I wanted to make a card that had some kind of reveal, particularly emphasizing the same head shape from one to the other.  Design process: Honestly this didn't end up quite as successful as I hoped it would be, but this is where I landed in the time that I had, and as it was they were pretty late. Next year is another opportunity!

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 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...