Have An Udderly Wonderful Christmas!

This card was made for the Mod Squad Challenge called – Timed Challenge!  One Layer Card – where we were to make a one layer card and note how long it took to complete – the quicker the better!  (Sadly, this site is no longer active.)

First of all, this card was FUN to make!  I had ink pads flying out of my hand, washi tape everywhere, and a mess on my desk that appeared faster than I ever thought possible!  (Somehow, I ended up with a cut on the back of my hand that I have no idea how I got!)  When I finished, I was imagining all us crazy crafters working at the speed of light, and I just started cracking up!  (It’s a good thing I was home alone at the time because I’m sure I sounded a little crazy!!)  I was so giddy and charged up that I actually considered a glass of wine until I realized it was only 8:30 in the morning so I chose to skip my second cup of coffee instead.  PHEW!!!

I included making the card base, setting up my stamp-a-ma-jig image templates and cutting my Washi tape in my reported times.  (I had already pulled out the stamps I wanted to use.)  Without the hats, this card was done in 2 minutes and 24 seconds.  Here is what it looks like without the hats:

The total time to make the card when you include stamping and coloring the hats, fussy cutting them, running them through the sticker maker, and adhering them to the card was 5 minutes and 58 seconds.

To make this card, I started with a Gina K Pure Ivory card base.  I taped a piece of Recollections “Gift It Christmas” Washi Crafting Tape onto my paper trimmer and sliced it in half lengthwise (it was originally 1 1/8 inch wide.) and adhered a strip to the top and bottom of my card base.  I stamped all the images in Memento Tuxedo Black ink and used the stamp-a-ma-jig for placement.  The greeting is by “I Break For Stamps.”  The cows are from the Gina K Designs “Primitive Blessings” set, and the hats are from the Gina K Designs “Winter Cheer” set where I stamped the two snowmen and the penguin on white scrap paper, colored the hats with Copic Markers R29 and E40, and then fussy cut the hats, ran them through my mini xyron sticker maker and adhered them to the card.

I discovered a few time savers as I worked through my initial plan.  The first time I tried cutting the washi tape, I started with a piece just slightly longer than the width of the card base.  I couldn’t get the two “halves” to be perfectly even; I’m not sure why since I was using the marks on the trimmer. (Probably because I was rushing!)  So then I just took a piece that was about a foot long and cut that in half.  The one strip was big enough to cover the top and bottom and was uniform in size since it started out as one piece.  The other half could be used for a second card or to decorate the inside of the card or the envelope.  I hadn’t use Washi tape much before, and I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to work with.  It is pretty forgiving in that you can easily remove it from your project if necessary, but it seems to stay put when you are done with it. Since I was rushing, it kept tangling and sticking to itself, but it was really easy to separate and flatten it.  It is also really thin, so it adds no bulk to your card at all.

To get the hats, I placed all three stamps on the same, large acrylic block and stamped them all at once.  The other thing that saved a bit of time was coloring the hats before they were cut out.  I was able to color them quickly while not worrying about going out of the lines since that would all be cut away.  I also realized that I needed to color in the ivory color (brick white) first.  When I used the red first, it seemed to want to bleed into the brick white.  This didn’t happen as much when the brick white was already there and dry.

I’m not sure I would be able to keep up the fast pace if I were making lots of these cards, but they are definitely simple enough to mass produce in a reasonable amount of time!  (Now, if I could just figure out how to do speed-photography and speed-blog-posting!!!)

Thanks for checking out my card project!

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