Baby Shower Invitations and SYFY #11

Did you ever start a project and not want to finish it? Ever just lose your enthusiasm? Well that happened to me tonight. A few weeks ago I mocked up a Baby Shower invitation, and while I was printing stuff on my 'puter the other night, something came over me (still trying to figure out what it was) and I printed off 20 invitations - 10 pink and 10 blue. No one has ordered these. No.one.

So then I started to stamp. And stamp. And stamp. It turned out I needed to stamp 60 images to make 20 cards. I used a onesie stamp from Outlines, and it was easy to make 3 distinct layers. Using the times tables from Elementary School (and you thought you'd never, ever, need those, am I right?): 3 x 20 = 60. Then I cut them all out.

Here we have all the cut-out parts. Blue + Yellow and Pink + Purple, Fortunately for me, it was a square image, so I did not go loony, though my hand did cramp after a while. Stamping and cutting - evening #1.

Evening #2, I did the layering. I stuck the bottom two layers together, and raised the top layer on Dimensionals. Please note: actually sticking down the top layer at this point was a mistake. I'll get to that in a sec. I did this 20 times. Then I stuck them all down to the card fronts and called it a night.

This morning I grabbed the humongous spool of blue ribbon and a smaller spool of pink, set them out on the table and went to the Day Job. I was all ready to go when I got home tonight. Then, we had trouble.

As I fed the ribbon under the raised image, it would not go through. Poorly placed Dimensionals. DRAT! What to do, what to do. My experience with removing a piece of card stock stuck down with Dimensionals has not been all that successful, and I was determined to NOT re-stamp all of those buggers.

Then a little light went off over my head. Lydia, from Understand Blue, had mentioned in passing the other night that Dental Floss - preferably the ribbon, but plain waxed works, too - would cleanly slice off a stuck-down layer from a card. YES!

I grabbed a length of floss and set in to dissect the card parts. I held it tightly between my hands, held down the card, and gently sawed my way past the stubborn Dimensionals.

It worked!

This is what it looked like post-sawing. (Please also notice that I printed everything on the wrong side of the card - that scored fold should be facing up. That can be our little secret, okay? Okay.)

I simply slid the ribbon where I wanted it, tied it, then put more Dimensionals on the back of the lifted up piece (I filled in the bare spots - left the old ones attached).

I would not recommend this as a PLANNED tactic, especially if you have 20 cards to make, but as a general SYFY method, it worked swimmingly!

So next time, if there ever is a next time, I will stick the top layer on AFTER I wrap the ribbon.

Here is the finished pink version ...

... and here is the finished blue one. Turns out the pale blue ribbon is really more of a minty green, but it still 'goes' okay. It's a baby color.

This is what I printed on the insides.

I made 10 of each, but there was a slight mishap with one of the pink ones when I printed the inside, and it slopped over the fold. Stoopid printer. How could 19 out of 20 come out right?! Sigh. So after all that work, I have two 5-packs of blue, one 5-pack of pink, one four-pack of pink and one single pink one that is unusable. I will GIVE it to whoever buys the 4-pack.

That's all for this evening. I have my market tomorrow (hopefully it will be done raining by then), followed by the monthly Clean Sweep and kit prep Saturday evening, and 2 of my 3 workshops are Sunday. I'll get my market update in some time this weekend ... AND ... I plan to resurrect the Under-Appreciated Holiday Challenge this week.

Thanks for stopping by!