I made a new digital card design for our holiday cards. I started in Adobe Fresco on an iPad with an Apple Pencil, moved to the computer and used Adobe Illustrator, then to print, used Adobe inDesign to do the layout. I like black and gray word art, but to give it a little pop I printed on pearlescent paper.
My plan is to put the design in Redbubble and cross post to my CarynsCreations.com site after the design is available.
I had fun making a new holiday card design. My intention was to imitate a linocut technique, but in Adobe Illustrator, so instead of building shapes, I erased bits from the shapes. Then I applied a gradient color to the left over parts to imitate hand painting a stamp, and printed on recycled card stock. To finish off the cards, I used a rounded corner punch, and hand-stamped the greeting inside.
I added a rider to my meadow deer for Halloween. The deer was purchased as a holiday decoration a couple years ago, and I liked having it in the meadow so much I decided to make it a year-round ornament. I have a few more projects on my plate this year than last, so an ornate Halloween sculpture wasn’t going to happen. But a simple three foot plastic skeleton twist tied to the back of the deer, with a length of scrap white ribbon for a bridle, well that was very doable.
I’ve periodically been sending cards to my eldest in college so there is mail in the mail box. We all signed a card, and I thought it would be nice if the pets “signed” it too. There are products that have ink on one side of a thin sheet of plastic, so prints of baby’s feet, or dog feet, can be made without getting ink on the foot. I love when people are clever. I made the paw prints on the card stock provided, the animals were mostly cooperative, then I cut out around the prints so I could arrange them the way I wanted. What I didn’t read closely, though, is that the ink doesn’t dry, so is intended to be framed behind glass where the print can’t be smudged. Oops. Thermal laminate sheets to the rescue. Running a lamination sheet through the heat roller without paper makes a nice clear, cuttable sheet of plastic. I trimmed this to my card size, attached the prints with glue dots, then used washi tape for the frame and to hold it all in place.
Can we talk about the size of Thor’s feet? Wowza. Griffin’s is understandably the largest print, he is the largest dog at about 50 pounds. Missy’s doggy print is next largest (she is 20 pounds). Thor’s print is near Missy’s in size; I haven’t weighed him lately, but he is an almost seven-month-old kitten. Izzy the cat’s print is definitely smaller than Thor’s and at last weigh she was 11.9 pounds. Sophie the cat has the most petite print, and was the most trouble to get a print, and of course is the print I wanted to send most. I was able to trim away most of the unwanted ink drag.
What a beautiful day to observe a solar eclipse! The temperature here in Texas was in the 60s, and the sky was clear. I made the word “eclipse” by poking holes in black card stock, essentially making a series of pinhole cameras. I held this above a white sheet of card stock to get the images of the moon moving between us and the sun.
We had some wind, so I found the best way to get my pictures was to use a branch to keep the white paper still on our mailbox, and fold the edges of the black paper to keep it rigid. I also snapped some pictures of the shadows of the trees, which made their own “pinholes” between layers of leaves.
Alas, we did not experience totality at our location. The picture above was taken when totality was predicted to occur.
Critters and Craft 