Envelope #151

May 31, 2014

Envelope #150

May 30, 2014

Envelope #149

May 29, 2014

Envelope #148

May 28, 2014

Envelope #147

May 27, 2014

Project #21--Mother's Day Ticket Holder

For this week, I wanted to share with you a project that I did for a friend of mine. My friend's mother (Joyce) was in NYC for the Mother's Day weekend and I had arranged to get a pair of tickets for Joyce and her husband to see the Broadway show that is in my theater.

The tickets were being held at the Box Office in Joyce's name so I wanted to do something special when she picked them up. Normally, the tickets are placed in an window envelope so that the name appears in the window area. I decided to make a card that would fit into the window envelope. I also needed to design the card so that the name would appear at the bottom of the card.

The Love card is a variation of the cast  Love Note cards that I handed out for Opening Night. The second option was the Happy Mother's Day card that appears above.

My friend chose the Mother's Day card and Joyce was very pleased and surprised when she picked up her tickets to see the show.

Envelope #146

May 26, 2014

Envelope #145

May 25, 2014

Envelope #144

May 24, 2014

Envelope #143

May 23, 2014

Envelope #142

May 22, 2014

Envelope #141

May 21, 2014

Envelope #140

May 20, 2014

Iron Craft 2014 Challenge #10--Blue Butterfly Book (Project 20)

Blue Butterfly Book
(Three times the letter B)

Iron Craft Challenge #10 was sponsored by the letter B. We were tasked with creating something inspired by the letter B--either a technique, or color, or thing. I knew that I wanted to make a Book (the first letter B). I also knew that I wanted to make something Blue (the second letter B). I have been meaning to make this project for a while and knew that I had two weeks to make it happen. AND--it took me all of those two weeks to do so.

I have always been interested in Pop Ups and actually took a class in Paper Engineering at The Center for Book Arts in NYC. A second class that I took was a bookbinding class that dealt with a special type of book called the Star Book Structure. Like a tunnel book, the pages are mounted to each other in layers to present a diorama per page. When the book is opened cover to cover, the pages make the shape of a five sided star. I was going through my Japanese paper stash and saw this paper that had butterflies on it--therefore, the third B.

The first job was to cut out butterflies and attach them so they would "fly" once the pages were open. I used some butterfly designs from a Dover Publication book as the basis of my collection. The first step was to cut out the butterflies.

Butterfly 1

Butterfly 2

Butterfly 3

Butterfly 4

Butterfly 5

The second step was to create the background--or the layer behind the butterfly (what is seen in red above). I used a grass pattern from a previous project and printed it onto vellum. I then cut the vellum to size and mounted it behind the butterfly layer.

Butterfly with vellum background

The third step was to create the back layer. This is a window cutout layer that allows the light of a battery operated tea light to shine through the vellum and to illuminate the butterfly from behind. This is the trickiest layer because the window has to be precisely cut and the spine has to be folded unto itself so the tea light can rest of the shelf that is created by this fold.

Layers two, three and four
(illuminated with a tea light)

The fourth step is to create the front layer through which the butterfly flies. Once again, this layer is based on precision because the there has to be enough room for the page to open without putting too much stress on the hinges but also has to accommodate the "flying butterfly."

Fully opened book

In the picture above, you see the individual layers of each page. When the pages are open, you can see the butterfly flying past the first window creating a 3-D effect. You can also see why they call this book structure a "Star Book."

Illuminated book from above

The special treat for this particular structure is the illumination caused by the battery operated tea light. When I took the class for this book structure, I was playing around with this concept. The teacher said that she had never seen anyone make this structure in this way. As you can see--the light really does add some special interest.

Envelope #139

May 19, 2014

Work in Progress--Step 2

Over the weekend, I shared a work in progress. The second step is to provide a background. Here is a vellum background that is backlit with a battery operated tea light.

Making more butterflies.

Envelope #138

May 18, 2014

Everything was ready--scanned, resized and saved. I even post it to my Flikr account. The only problem--I didn't post it to the blog. Oops.

Maybe I had butterflies on my mind.

Work in Progress

Add caption

Work in progress. Making Butterflies.

Envelope #137

May 17, 2014

Envelope #136

May 16, 2014

Envelope #135

May 15, 2014

A little bit of color

Envelope #134

May 14, 2014

Envelope #133

May 13, 2014

Project #19--Mother's Day Cards

For this week's project, I decided to share with you a Mother's Day card that I made for all of the mothers at the theater. I designed the card so that it could be used for any occasion. The greeting on the inside can be customized for any special event from Valentine's Day to Birthday to Mother's Day.

Envelope #132

May 12, 2014

Envelope #131

May 11, 2014

Envelope #130

May 10, 2014

Envelope #129

May 9, 2014

This is supposed to be a peppermint.

Envelope #128

May 8, 2014

Envelope #127

May 7, 2014

Alphabet Series

(will continue throughout the year but

not all at once)

Envelope #126

May 6, 2014

Iron Craft 2014 Challenge #9--Mondrian Card (Project 18)

Mondrian Artwork

For Iron Craft Challenge #9, we were asked to created something inspired by art. I have always been a fan of Piet Mondrian--the father of the color block concept. I knew what I wanted to do--I just didn't know in what format to work. I though about doing a canvas and acrylic painted piece. I thought about doing a paper cutout mini-poster using scrapbook solid paper.

I put the project on the back burner. As I was cleaning up my studio from a previous project, I decided to remove all of the paper scraps from my guillotine. Usually, I sort them into color families and file the pieces into an accordion folder for later use. The problem that I have with sorting is that I never know when to stop and throw away some of the smaller pieces.

That was when the light bulb went on. I collected the smaller pieces (those usually less than an inch wide) and started to think a la Mondrian. I came up with the following card.

Mondrian inspired card

All of the papers used in this project are from Rhonda Miller who I have mentioned on many occasions on this blog. I was so happy to be able to use the smaller scraps to make this card. The only problem is that I will hoard even more paper and will eventually never throw any paper scraps away.

I mean, really--how small is too small?

Envelope #125

May 5, 2014

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone

Envelope #124

May 4, 2014

Last day of Variation on a Rose

Envelope #123

May 3, 2014

Rose Bouquet

Project #17--Bullets Over Broadway Opening Night Cards

Well, I have finally finished all of my Opening Night gifts for the current show at my theater. I have discussed some of the cards that I have already made here, here, and here. I am so glad to be finally done and can now move on to other projects.

All in all, I made 30 of the Opening Night Cards (for the crew), 105 Love Cards (21 ensemble members who got 5 cards each), and 45 Quote Cards (9 principle actors who got 5 cards each).

I spent 15 hours on the Opening Night Cards, 25 hours on the Love Cards, and 8 hours on the Quote Cards for a total of 48 hours.

Granted, these cards were unexpected and the burden was self-imposed but I am finally glad to be done with them.

I never really know how these cards are received. Many people understand the craftmanship, some don't. Many appreciate the effort, some don't. And, some people say Thank You, yet many don't. I always feel like The Little Drummer Boy or The Littlest Angel when presenting these cards as gifts.