House Move Card and New Envelope Board

Last weekend, my aunt moved into a residential home near my cousin in Somerset, so I made her a “welcome to your new home” card. While Mum was away, my sister took her to see my aunt once she had settled in, and she said the place was very nice, and was on the high street in a country market town. When Mum saw the card I’d made, she said it looked very much like the real thing, which I was pleased about, not having seen it!

I sketched the outline of the houses onto a piece of scrap office printing paper and then went round the outline with a black zig permanent pen. After drawing in the details (roof tiles, chimneys, windows etc.), I accentuated the edges with a thicker Zig pen to create some shadows.

Using Distress Inks as watercolours (smooshing the ink pad on my craft sheet and then picking up the ink on a wet brush), I painted most of the houses with Tea Dye, and used Black Soot for the shadows and for the roof tiles, to create a monochrome effect. I picked out one of the houses in colour (Spiced Marmalade for the roof, and Barn Door for the house itself) to make it pop.

I matted and layered this drawing onto a piece of scrap gold card that was part of a face cream box. To create the background on the base card, I applied circular shapes with an Inkylicious Ink Duster in Tea Dye and Aged Mahogany Distress Inks, and after assembling the card, I wrote the sentiment by hand.

On the inside, I used the same Distress Inks to add a bit of interest to the white card, and again hand-wrote the text.

WeR Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board

I recently saw this online and was impressed by its ease of use, and the fact that you can use it to create other objects besides envelopes – boxes, gift pouches, etc. I have never had any success with envelope boards in the past and this looked so easy, I decided to give it a try.

I was certainly not disappointed! The board comes with a chart printed on it (inches) and with a separate sheet with metric numbers. It comes with its own bone folder which slots into the semi-circular recess on the right hand side. You can see that there is a scoring line running diagonally from the top on the right, and a central button, from which projects a small pointer. To the left of the button is a ruler, in inches and centimetres.

What you do is to choose the size on the chart which is nearest to your card size, and it tells you how big to cut the paper. It is very clever because the measurements it gives you for cutting and scoring make allowances for the need for there to be a bit of “play” so that the card is not too tight a fit in the envelope.

You line the paper up with edge of the board at the top. The chart also tells you the measurement to line the paper up to, against the ruler. Once you have done this, you press the blue button, which punches out a notch. Without moving the paper, you score down the diagonal groove. You then remove the paper, and turn it counter-clockwise through 90 degrees. There is no longer any need to measure, because all you have to do is line up the scored line to the pointer, and then punch and score again. You repeat this for the other two sides.

The final step is to insert each corner in turn into the back of the button, and punch. This rounds the corners.

Here is how my envelope came out.

You can see that I have lightly inked it in the manner as before, and in the same colours, but keeping it very light.

I turned it over and inked one of the flaps, which will be the opening of the envelope, again using the same colours.

I extended the inking down into the centre of the envelope – this inking would then become the “lining” of the envelope.

Here is the envelope made up.

I folded the envelope along all of the score lines, and ran my ATG gun along the edges of the flap opposite to the opening, and stuck them down, thus holding the envelope secure. If you wanted to, you could run a little envelope glue along the edges of the top flap, but I didn’t bother – I just slipped the flap into the back of the envelope.

Here is the card with its matching envelope.

If you make a long thin envelope, the bottom flap will project upwards in a point. You can always cut this off if you don’t like it. You can also change which flaps go on front and which behind, when making it up, so that you can have a long thin envelope opening at one end, if you so desire.

I suddenly find that I am able to make cards of any size or shape! Before the board, I tended to restrict myself to either A5 or A6 (finished size) cards, because these were the sizes for which I had envelopes. Today I really pushed the boat out, and made a square card! This is such a totally cool tool and it’s so easy to use, to get a good result every time. I can see this becoming a very useful tool indeed, and I’d recommend it to anyone to add to their equipment arsenal.