City Cards - DONE!

I.AM.DONE. They say to be careful what you wish for - you just might get it. Well, every crafter likes to have at least one item that they (at least in their own minds) "created" all by themselves, and that people actually want to buy. Well, these City Cards are my item:

These are quite popular, as I have them for various cities and towns that our market serves, and I make others when I do shows in other towns. Yes, I have quite the collection. BUT, they are a ton of work to make ... lots of coloring, mostly ... so I make them in large batches. It generally takes me about three evenings to make them, but this time it took the better part of a week. I am now rethinking my strategy, and next time I think I'll either make them in smaller batches or raise my prices. Or both.

Before I get started, let me tell you what Koshka pulled this evening. She is a cat, and cats like to explore. Cats are also funny (not stoopid, oh, no, I'd never say that) in that if you move something, they think it's new. Mm-hmm. True.

She's lived with me almost 11 years now, and tonight she "discovered" the book cases. She had once again leaped (leapt?) up onto the table to help me color, when she suddenly noticed the lower shelf of the book case was not totally stuffed with books:

... so, being a cat, she got into the available space to make it her own. Then she realized she had no where to go. Or turn around. Or back up. BUSTED! heh heh I am so mean.

She figured it out, though:

After that "OMG, I'm way high", she did a not-so-graceful airborne 180 and landed with a thud back onto the table. Adventure over. And this is not the first time she's tried that trick, either. It always ends the same, too.

Since tonight I have nothing of substance to show you except for that finished City card at the top of my post, I decided to drag it out and re-cap my creation process. I think it's kind of fun to watch the card evolve. Let us begin.

First I print the names of the various cities onto some white note cards (SU in this case):

Next, I stamp the row houses (stamp by Stampendous) on each card:

Starting with the yellow, I color one house on each card ...

... then the green:

... then the putty:

... then the last two houses are red:

Next up - the doors:

... then the roofs/rooves:

... then I outline the images in a light color (I used W1 & W2 tonight - my W1 died on me ...) and I draw in some birds:


I stamp my personalized stamp on each one, then package them in 5-packs. Some cards are not 5-pack worthy, so I do have some singles, too. This is what 75 note cards look like:

The end.

I still have some Mother's Day cards to assemble before I can go to bed. I have a new Friday market I'm heading to mid-afternoon, so anything I plan to have to sell must be finished tonight. But now that these City cards are done, I should have some breathing room next week.

Thanks for stopping by!