RETIREMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

My newest card-crafting project is to send announcements of my retirement to long-standing design clients and colleagues. My "official" retirement will be at the end of the month and I wanted to get these into the mail or handed out personally by the middle of next week (specifically on September 25th, which is my birthday).

 

I owe a shout-out to the European ladies designing for Alexandra Renke, who have inspired me to bind these cards similar to the beautiful books and cards they're designing.

I used large 22" x 30" watercolor paper sheets and wanted to cut the papers to use the untrimmed edges for the right side of each of the cards - I think a couple of them might have ended up with the untrimmed edge on the top. The final cards measure 6" x 6" and the coordinating envelopes are 6-1/2" x 6-1/2" square envelopes from Paper and More (Sunset Orange). I lined them with "Blueprint" metallic text, also by Paper and More. I stamped the butterfly image on the fronts of the envelopes and embossed with Stampendous embossing powder in Pirate Gold.

 

The primary butterfly image is by Kaiser Craft - #DD928 "Butterfly" and the inside "Change" sentiment is from Impression Obsession's #WP684 "Leaf Set". Not obvious by the photographs is that the colored portion of the butterfly is embossed with navy embossing powder - the shine of the embossing doesn't show up. The die-cut rectangle (I think by Lawn Fawn) is colored with Copic markers. The rectangle is then mounted to red-orange stock, adhered to the butterfly, and then outlined with a gold Pen-touch pen.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

I printed the interior message with my computer. The butterfly image was stamped over the face of the copy with PTI "Spring Rain" ink. The Change image on the left by Obsession Impression is embossed with gold embossing powder and the rectangle was added with gold pen to repeat the same image as the face of the card. I made a total of 18 of these cards and had to be very judicious about who I send them to!