Friday, January 22, 2010

For The Pea

One of my Tweeps goes by the name @BrownEyedPea, and one day she said she wished she had some personal stationery or note cards, and I offered to play to see if we could come up with something acceptable.

She actually found two stamps online that she liked and I used them for her creations. She even gave me permission to share the end result with the world, so here we go!

First are the note cards*:

I printed the sentiment on the computer in a color I thought was close to Mellow Moss, but turned out to be a little darker, which actually turned out to be a good thing. The pea pod is stamped in Artichoke Craft Ink and embossed with clear EP.

The stamped image and coloring breaks several stamping rules, and even though I thought there was a reason I should stop, ever the rebel, I waited until I was all done to check on it.

You see, I did several mock-ups, and in the end, she liked the embossed outline for the pea pod, and I liked the coloring with the Copics better than dye ink markers. As I colored more and more of them, I got a niggling feeling I was not supposed to mix alcohol markers and heat-embossed images. Did it stop me? No!

After I was all done, I sent out a plaintive plea to my Tweeps, asking if these cards would eventually disintegrate in the hands of the recipient. Apparently alcohol inks are supposed to dissolve embossing, but my crazy-good coloring skills (HAHAHA! not) did not seem to have caused that to happen, so I am safe. SAFE! Perhaps if I colored over the lines instead of between them it would have been ugly. Or maybe the alcohol markers are a different formulation than alcohol inks. Either way: Phew!

Here is a close-up of the pea pod:

You know what? I've just decided close-ups are a bad idea in my world. I can now see all the spots that are not perfectly colored. I intensely dislike seeing that. Hmph. ANYway, you can see the embossed lines and the two different colors of green I used (peas are YG63 and the pod is G85), and the outline (W-1). There is no science to my selection - I just liked those two greens together.

We also made some cards for Valentine's Day using the pea pod plus a sentiment:

The pea pod is colored here with YG63 (I went over the top of the pod with extra strokes to make it a little darker) and the hearts are R11. I stamped the sentiment in Artichoke.

And the obligatory close-up:

I think these came out pretty nice! It's a fun play on her Twitter name, don't you think?

I also had some fun with packaging. I am trying to improve in the packaging arena this year, and to that end I got a bunch of different sizes of clear boxes with my last shipment of the clear bags I use for my cards. This is what I did for each of the two sets of cards:

(Please look away from the glaringly-bad lighting in this photo.) I was very happy they all fit in the box size I'd selected. *wipes brow* These boxes are 1/2" deep, and just a bit larger than the open cards in length and width. I decided I wanted the boxes to hold the cards open (not folded), as it would be easier with larger quantities. Plus, I've had professionally-made stationery in the past, and all of them came not-yet-folded, so I figured there was probably a good reason for the practice.

I have all the cards laid out on top, the envelopes are split into two stacks under the cards, and they just fit in the box.

Let's try a side view:


The red line I made over there on the right denotes the stack of note cards. The blue lines show the two stacks of envelopes underneath the cards. It worked out fit-wise quite well.

So thanks, Pea, for the opportunity to make you something special and unique. And thanks for the dry run on my packaging. ;-) This was fun!

* The cards are all Very Vanilla Raised Edge Note Cards from SU, now sadly retired. I was fortunate enough to have hoarded them at the time, and I stocked up when they hit the retirement list. My collection is running dangerously low, and I'll be shopping for replacement cards very soon.

That's all I have for today. Thanks for stopping by!

6 comments:

  1. I love Pea and I love your cards! They are so cute!

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  2. Pea is SO EXCITED she can't stand it!!! You are so wonderful to work with and the cards are witty and just perfect!!!! Thank you so much!
    xoxo~ Pea

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  3. These are just wonderful, Leslie. Can you give me lessons?

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  4. Who would have thought you could find a rubber stamp of a pea pod filled with hearts? Very cute!

    Secondly, (and I'm sure you would tell me the same thing) - stop pointing out your mistakes to people! No one would notice (I didn't). Sheesh.

    Very cute - great job, packaging and all.

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  5. GREAT..I can post on this one...LOL'
    ADORE these....so darn cute I want to change my name to Pea!

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I'd love to hear what you really think! :-)

PS: I've had to disable Anonymous comments, because the spammers were killing me. If you are unable to comment, please email me your comment and I'll get it posted for you. Sorry. (stoopid spammers)