Friday, November 21, 2008

Asian Card Order

A couple that eats lunch each Tuesday at the Japanese restaurant where I also have lunch on Tuesdays requested that I make some Asian cards for them. They were my first customers when I started selling my cards the first of this year. I made a total of 9 cards and they purchased 7 of them. This first card has a brown card base, then a layer of black. I stamped a square shadow stamp in Memories Soft Sand ink and then stamped the 4 Kanji cubes in Creamy Brown chalk ink. Each of the symbols were outlined with a clear Spica glitter pen. The husband likes this particular card a lot so I have made several of this design for him over the last few months.
This card has a piece of burgundy card stock as the first layer. Then I cut a piece of Ultra White card stock and mounted it onto the burgundy. The white is the actual card which opens on the right side. The cherry blossom stem was stamped twice in brown ink. I stamped the branch again several times on a piece of scrap white and cut out the flowers and put them over the flowers that I stamped first with a tiny piece of foam tape. I colored the flowers with a Sakura Glaze red pen. When this ink dries, it has a raised effect. I cuttlebugged about 1 inch of the edge of the white and tied a burgundy ribbon at the crease end. The ribbon is two-toned and is covering a mistake I made when I stamped the branch a second time. :) The stamp set is from SU.

I have made this particular card using a peach and sage green color scheme and is posted in an older post. This card was done in sage green, lavender and plum. I colored the flowers in lavender. The corners were all rounded and the oval with the sentiment was edged in lavender and mounted with foam tape. A very classic card and perfect for a sympathy card.


The card base of the card on the left is SU Groovy Guava. The layers are gold metallic, a square of Washi paper, another gold metallic layer and then white. I then stamped a Japanese flower on the white square with SU Groovy Guava ink and put some Stardust Stickles in the center of the flower. I actually CASED the design from a card sample at The Paper Garden.
The card next to it was made in an Asian card class at The Paper Garden. The stamp set is from Kodomo. It's a different set than what we used in class sample. The card was cut 4.25 inches by 11 inches and scored at 5.5 inches. I used Stardust Stickles on the Iris and the Kanji stamp. I cut a small slit in the top fold and threaded the ribbon through and then added the small square before tying the ribbon. The inks used are chalk.



The card on the left was also done in an Asian card class. It's cut a little larger than usual. The three stamps used is part of a Kodoma stamp set. The gold cord was looped through the Asian coin then wrapped around the panel several times and tied in the back. Because the cord was bulky, I used foam tape to adhere the panel to a green card base. I cut a half of an inch from the front side of the card then used the 4th stamp from this set and stamped a border along the bottom edge. To get it straight I actually drew a faint line with a pencil to use as a guide for placement of the stamp. I stamped it in brown as were the three stamps on the colored squares.
The card next to it has a brown card base. I cut a piece of Washi paper and adhered it on the left edge of the card. It has blues and golds with white cranes. The fans were stamped on white cardstock with Versamark and then embossed with gold embossing powder. I layered it with a piece of gold cardstock. The wife told me the fans were placed wrong, that the fans should be facing up. The card sample I CASED from The Paper Garden had the fans going down sideways. Of course the stamps that were used on that sample were individual fans on a cube. This stamp was one piece from Hanko.
I hestitate making Asian cards when they are requested from someone who is Asian, be it Japanese or Chinese. It's hard to know if something will be offensive to them. That is one of the reasons that most of the Asian cards I've made have been CASED from the samples at The Paper Garden. I try to change them a little so it's not an exact copy. One of the many things I like about this particular store is that there are tons of card samples and the customers are encouraged to bring a camera and take pictures of the samples.




The card on the left has a black card base, a layer of white then a layer of red Stardust which is shimmery. Then a smaller square of black and a square of white. The stamp used is from Hanko. I colored 2 of the flowers with Copic red marker. On the black flowers I used a clear Spica glitter pen to outline the lines in the center of the flowers.
The next card has a gray card base, a black layer and another gray layer. The purple is a piece of Washi paper that has a design in it. The kimono is a sticker from Hanko. I cut 2 narrow stripes of gold paper and placed them on the side and then a small chop stamp on the bottom right corner that I stamped with black ink.
These cards are all for sale at $4.00 each.





2 comments:

jalna said...

I just looove looking at your cards, and I so appreciate your explanations. I chuckled when you admitted covering up a mistake with a ribbon. I can so relate to that. It's amazing how innovative we can become when trying to hide mistakes. Having been away from rubber stamping for awhile, I never heard of Cuttlebug, but looking at your cards makes me want to get one. jalna

Betty Townsend said...

You will be so hooked once you purchase a Cuttlebug or any of the other embossing machines on the market. There are so many of them. One of the neat things about some of them is that the embossing folders and die cuts are interchangeable. Then you get into all kinds of "sandwiches" you need to use with the different embossing folders. There's also the Cricut which is like $300. My Cuttlebug I got at Michael's with a gift certificate my stepkids gave me for my birthday, plus a coupon I found online plus it being on sale. It was regularly $80 and I got it for $65. The folders are around $5. I do, absolutely love this little machine!!