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:

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...

My friend and I are continuing to send each other homemade greeting cards that include paper mechanics. This friend is also one of the people that donated to my fundraiser a handful of years ago and was on my list to receive a mystery gift. I asked for a theme, and he said he liked magic and Art Nouveau, so I came up with a design in an Art Nouveau style* incorporating props he has used in his magic shows and from when he was a Stormtrooper in the 501st Legion . This is not that gift. But since I had just completed the actual gift and it was my turn to send a card, I took the opportunity to make a companion piece. *at least inspired by, I also love this style but am new to actually working in it Process: Sketch, work out the design and mechanic concept Mechanic prototype on scrap paper Put the design in the computer Indicate size and placement of wheel, and cut lines Add graphics that will appear on the moving parts Separate into two parts, one for the base and one of the wheel to att...

One of my engineery-crafty* friends got a Cricut, so we lately we've been for-real pen pals with analog letters and low-stakes paper crafting projects.  The first exchange was fairly normal letters (although his was miniature and mine was written on shopping list paper because that's all I have for stationary right now), and then he sent me a foam-and-paper creation with a tab-operated camera iris and a background light, so obviously I had to step up my game. 2020's been a tough year, so that was my theme. Note: ideally I would have made this out of black or other dark-colored card stock, but I was using what I had on hand, which was white cover stock and black construction paper. The Process First the concept sketch, then a very rough prototype from scrap paper for proof of concept (found a design flaw immediately and was able to correct for the second draft). Then I went back and added measurements to the sketchbook page. In hindsight, I should have combined two of these ...