Assembly Line 102 (or Why I Have No Life)

Someone made the mistake of asking for a detailed explanation of how I do mass production of my cards, so I felt the need to satisfy. Plus, with so many cards to make in one sitting, I was happy for the opportunity to break up the process.

I uploaded the pics in size "small" so I do not fill up Blogger, and it lets me have a running commentary down the right-hand side. So get a cuppa joe, or a vat of your beverage of choice, and settle in for a long read.

First I must explain what prompted this stamping frenzy. A year or so ago, one of my co-workers introduced me to The Paper Source. Let me just say that if you have a weakness for paper, even the 12x12 size, do not, I repeat: DO NOT, go to The Paper Source. If you want a mere 12x12, they have that upstairs. But to get upstairs, you have to walk through walls and walls and displays and more displays covered with parent sheets. Beautiful, lovely parent sheets, just asking to be brought home...

Just what is a Parent Sheet? Definition: The larger size sheets of paper used by commerical printers are called parent sheets. These large sheets of paper are typically printed to fold into smaller sizes such as for booklets or brochures. Or, parent sheets are printed then cut into smaller sizes. Standard parent sheet sizes are 17x22, 19x25, 23x35, and 25x38 (North American sheet sizes) or A2, A1, and A0 (ISO sheet sizes).

I went to The Paper Source. I saw paper. I bought paper. If you think it is tough to use a whole 12x12 piece, imagine how much fun it is to use a whole Parent Sheet. And I have many. Many many. So tonight The Plan was to hack up some parent sheets and make some CRS cards (I am sold out, again.)

After you read a few of these steps, you will see that the majority of the work is in the preparation. Kinda like cooking and that whole mis en place thing. So here we go.

1. Cut up the card stock for the bases. I'd opted for Naturals Ivory. I cut a lot, and scored them with my Scor-Pal.
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2. Cut up the parent sheets. Here I have three different sheets all cut up into 4 x 5 1/4. Tonight we'll be using the top two. The bottom one will be used another night, but while I was hacking ... well, you know.

Notice the nice, almost permanent curl to the papers. Can you tell they have been rolled up for a long time?

3. Select the color for the mat. I have two different papers, so I chose two different greens for their respective mats.

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4. Select the ribbon. I opted for these from my stash. I love it when I actually find something to almost match from the stash.
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5. Stamp the images. These are the ladies I'll be using. I stamped 24 of them.

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6. Stamp the sentiments. I chose two different ones. While I like the CRS one, I had that other one that had yet to see ink, and it worked with the lady image, so I used it.

(It says, "Pretending to be a normal person day after day is exhausting.")

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7. Cut the CRS images away from the other stuff on the card stock so they can be punched out with the Key Tag punch.

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7.1. Curse self for not stamping the sentiments along the sides of the card stock so you didn't have to cut off the holes, one by one, to make room for the punch to reach the next image.
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8. Cut up the larger sentiments to get them ready to be trimmed.

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9. Trim the sentiments. Since they will each be on a different card, there is no need to make them the same size. This is good. For me, anyway.

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10. Trim the ladies. Same deal as the sentiments - no need to get them all the same. Anyone who comes to my workshops knows I am incapable of cutting two pieces of card stock the same size, anyway.

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11. Here are the trimmings from the ladies and the sentiments, also known as crumbs. Throw them away.
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12. Stick the ladies down to one of the pieces of green card stock being used for the mats. Notice they are different sizes. Because I am incapable of cutting two pieces of card stock exactly the same size, this is a perfect method for me for matting. Maybe not for you, but it certainly works well for me.

13. Keep going onto the second piece of the same color green card stock. You'll need it for the last two ladies plus the sentiments. And no, that is not wasted space there in the middle. I will use that later for punching out the circles I'll need. See? I maximize the paper edge usage and get scrap in the middle for the circles. I love it when a plan comes together.

Oh, and notice I punched the corners of the sentiments with the Ticket Corner punch before I stuck them onto the green mat.

14. Repeat with the other images and the second color of green card stock.
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15. Cut up the green stuff to make it easier to get to the individual images.
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16. Trim all the ladies and sentiments, leaving a nice, even border of green around each piece. I choose to do this by hand, as I have a bad track records with the trimmer(s). I do believe I can say with utmost confidence that I have better luck with hand-trimming than I do with using the paper cutter. Go figure.

16a. Throw away all those green crumbs. See how small my work are is getting? Yeesh.

17. Stick the pre-cut pieces of paper to the card fronts. (Aren't they pretty?) Do them all. Now.
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18. Cut the ribbon for the first set of 5 cards. I cut mine too short. You should cut yours the right length.
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19. Cut a slit in the fold of the card using an exacto knife and a cutting mat.
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20. Slip the ribbon through the slit and tie it around the card front. Or, if you are like me and cut it too short (please don't be like me), tape it down to the card front.
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21. Put Dimensionals on the back of one of the lady images and stick her onto the card. Note how she conveniently hides my boo-boo with the ribbon. I felt like she looks when I realized I'd erred when cutting the ribbon.

22. Stick the CRS sentiment to one of the green circles punched from the "you thought I was being wasteful" piece of card stock. I noticed it disappeared into the patterned paper, so it needed another step.

23. I punched 5 circles out of some Naturals Ivory card stock and added them behind the green circles so you can see the green circles.
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24. Done with one! I made four more. Then I made five with the other paper design and images with the other color green mat.
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25. Here we have ten completed CRS cards.

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26. Time to work on the other version of this card with the "Pretending to be normal" sentiment. This is what I have left, both in supplies for this project and in still-smaller available work space. How does that happen?!

27. Here is my first attempt to lay out the lady with the larger sentiment. I pretty much knew the pieces would overlap, so it was just a matter of getting the dimensionals in the right spots.
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28. Tying the ribbon and all that other fun stuff was done the same as above. Here is the first finished card of this flavor. I made four more.
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29. Then I made this one, then four more.
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30. Here we have it: Twenty finished cards. Phew!
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Normally I do not make this many cards in one sitting. Normally I am not faced with a cut-up parent sheet. Or two. Heck, it's bad enough dealing with a 12x12. I will never again whine about using a whole piece of 12x12. Well, maybe not.

So that's it. That's what I do when I should be eating or cleaning or, like now, sleeping. Oh, and I have a bunch of scraps from those parent sheets. Anyone want them? ;-)