Frantic Birthday Card Making

It always seems that as soon as I have a block of spare time, there seems to be somebody I should be making a card for. Since I'm still learning, this takes me forever and I'm not clever enough to make more than one at a time (although I plan to change this in the near-future).

I originally wanted to make a pop-up card for my husband. He and I both work from home and it's hard to find time when I'm completely alone. I was also working at the last-minute, so I needed to find a technique that I could do in short bursts of time. I figured that a pop-up would require larger blocks of time and that I should make a card that lights up instead. Both of these things I plan on exploring more and designing my own, but time wasn't on my side and I had to get this done quickly without my husband noticing. At least I already had the supplies!

I did a quick search online to see if anybody had tutorials up since my last search half a year ago. And yes, Chibitronics had partnered with Lawn Fawn a few months ago and shared the results. The slide switch appealed to me because the lights wouldn't go on unless the card was pressed, so it won't drain the battery. Plus I wouldn't have to worry about building a sliding tab switch.

Then I went about looking in the Silhouette Store for a design I could use. I was this close to making my own, but it would have added anywhere between two and ten hours and I needed to get it done.

I managed to run my Silhouette Cameo while my husband was hanging around and he didn't notice that I was cutting a Birthday card. I then went to bed pleased with myself that I was a day ahead of time and that I could easily make the circuit the following day. I was seriously proud of myself.

Then the next day he was going to drive out of town on an errand. I waited. And waited. He left and for whatever reason I didn't get started. Which turned out to be a good decision because instead of being out of the house for two hours, he was gone for 20 minutes. He said that traffic was bad and that he'll try again the next day. Then he said he was going to do some sorting in the spare room. I waited. And waited. Never happened. He stayed in the office with me and declared at 11pm, "I'm not getting much done today. How about you?" I had to sifle a laugh.

The day I was going to gift the card, my husband leaves for his errands. I thought I could get the circuit done quickly, but drew it wrong and didn't realize until after I laid down the copper tape. And Oh no, I don't have that much time left! Quick, lay down the tape. Test the lights. Yes, they're working. Glue it to the base. Test the lights. The middle isn't working. WHAAAAT?! How do I troubleshoot that? Hell if I know. Just put the design on top and call it a day.

But oh yeah, it needs a greeting. Good thing I've been practicing a little (very little) with the Tombow brush pens. This is actually the main reason why I want to work on my hand. The calligraphy is Not Great. I had to define the letters a bit with the black liner. I guess I'll be downloading practice sheets later tonight.

I have a wedding card to make before the first week of July. I think I'll start on that this week. :heh:

Overwhelmed Much?

I caught a cold and was laid up for an entire week.

All my prep time? Gone. My dayjob stuff? Not late for once, but it takes a priority now.

I managed to make this Mother's Day card for my aunt right before I decided that I should hole up in bed with a "Tiny House" marathon on TV.

 Cut file from Silhouette, color is Dylusions spray.

That break ended up lasting for about five days. The only good thing was that I was able to work on one of my books in bed. The idea was to make two cards at once, but that wasn't meant to be. I had to send the one card that afternoon and the other could wait until the morning of Mother's Day. A few days later, I crawled out of bed to make this card for my mother.

Cut file from Silhouette, color is Dylusions spray, poorly edged with Distress ink

When I started to feel better, I looked at the calendar and realized when my dayjob projects are due. I had to hit the ground running on some work here.

Melville's Moby Dick adapted by Chabouté

Ever since I updated my version on InDesign, the internal dictionary is now randomly hyphenating words so I have to really watch what happens when I move the edges of text frames. I mean. seriously, "unders-tanding"? If anybody can tell me how to fix this, please let me know!

Fate/Zero #3 by Gen Urobuchi and Shinjirō

When I took a small break, I went into my hobby room and saw I still had some of these left undone.

These still need to be domed.

 I am officially overwhelmed and seriously doubt I can have stuff ready for the next Frankenstein's Swap Meet next week. Color me a little bummed. These are pictures of stuff I've actually done. There's so much swimming in my head. Some things percolate to the top and go under just as quickly and others stay long enough for me to capture it. Needless to say, I have a to-do list that's as long as two arms and part of a leg. The things that keep surfacing is calligraphy and small illustrations as ACEOs. I just have to get these two books lettered before I can work on those things. Hopefully when I AM finished, they won't bubble under to be replaced by something else (Cardmaking! Decal cutting! Pop-ups! Paper circuits! Dioramas!).