How Did You Get Interested in Papercrafting?

by Amanda Harryman

The Beginner

I know so many started when they were kids, but in my family, we mostly did crafts of the fabric and yarn varieties. Years ago when my BFF (who happens to be my cousin) was planning her wedding, she decided we should make the invites. She was lucky enough to have a co-worker and friend who was able to induct us into the world and showed us some basics that made our first foray into papercrafting a success! I wasn’t able to find an image of that first invite, but my BFF and I continue to papercraft together, often in the form of invitations and programs for happy events.

Best thing about your best friend being your cousin is you have a BFF for life!

Baby Sprinkle

The next happy event is a “sprinkle” for my BFFs second bundle of joy. What’s a sprinkle you ask? It’s what you throw when you don’t really need all the gifts from a shower, but you want to celebrate the arrival of your child anyway! This will be our first invitation project after I started work here at Imagine. It was so exciting to know the best inks to use and to have learned so many fun techniques from all our Artists in Residence! Speaking of our artists—I must have been thinking about this project when we decided to challenge our Artists in Residence this month with “multiples of”. My favorite part of challenging artists…they never do what you think they will do! From Kassy’s Bear Hugs card where she stamped the same image multiple times for a fun tone-on-tone card, to Jennifer Vanderbeek’s stunning example of generation stamping with VersaFine Clair. (Oh man, do I wish I had some VersaFine Clair when I was making my multiple invitations!) I love to see everyone’s take on a few simple words.

Back to the Invites

My cousin knew she wanted a little fox image for the invite and of course, she found an adorable fox from Lawn Fawn. We set a date for planning them out and I found these pre-cut non-traditional card bases I had bought years ago from a store that no longer exists that I thought I would offer up as an idea even though I knew I didn’t have enough for all the invitations we would make. (For anyone in the PNW – how much do you miss The Paper Zone?!) Let’s be honest – these card bases were probably at least a decade old. My BFF shows up with her ideas and she presents an identical set of card bases, bought at the same place at the same time as me, but in blue. We were one big circle punch away from what we think was a pretty cute design in the end.

I used my trusty VersaFine Onyx Black for the fox image and watercolored in with Memento ink. I did all my other stamping in StazOn, because when you are making a bunch of invitations, you don’t want to worry about smudging when you stack them up. StazOn’s quick dry time was perfect. I tried my hand at some lettering with my Memento Markers. I’ll admit some were more successful than others! But now it’s time to have a fun afternoon celebrating and then wait for the big day when we welcome Jakob into this world.