But there's a catch to this concept. The cards may be executable in 10 minutes or less, but only after you have figured out exactly what you want to do and how to do it. That part - the creative part - takes much longer.
I can't even remember how I came across the image below - on a blog, or on Pinterest, but I pinned it with the notion of trying this idea and that it would have high visual impact, and take a short time to do.
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| Image from Nancy Burke's Blog, Scraps & Ink |
For the artist, this tag served as the base for a more elaborate creation, but it was the tag I wanted to focus on. So many elements of it appeal to me: the neutral palette, the indecipherable writing in the background, the overlay of the reverse stencil of an image from nature. Perfect. I didn't capture an image of my first attempt to replicate it. It was imperfect, to say the least, but worth trying again so I could get it right.
Last week, I needed to make a birthday card quickly, and as I had pulled out two tags when trying to recreate the image above, I thought I'd give it another go. Here's what my final card looked like.
I used a Tim Holtz layering stencil to ink the floral image over my stamped script. You can see a bit more of the script on the actual card than you can in the photo, but I should have used a darker ink, and not rubbed quite so much of it away to make it more noticeable. The other main difference between my tag and the original is that Nancy Burke didn't use a stencil in her's. Instead, she die cut the branches and used those as a mask or a reverse stencil. This left more areas of the tag open so the text shows through. I definitely want to try that next time.
For the sentiment, I used a pre-colored scrap that was near to hand, (and a Happy Birthday that was out because I hadn't put it away from a previous project), and tore and darkened the edges (another Tim Holtz thing) to create some definition between the layers of paper. As I assembled the card, I thought the base needed something to make it less plain. So I used the Champagne Dots stamp from Paper Source in a rose-colored ink to add a subtle pattern to the base without distracting from the tag.
In the end, I did pull the final card together quickly. It took more than ten minutes, but probably less than twenty. If this becomes a technique I use often, and I figure out how dark to make the text, how to use the mask/stencil (and get it made and ready to go), and how to transform a tag into an actual card, I'm sure I can get my time down. If that's a worthwhile goal in the first place.
Although it seems like a good idea to have this store of techniques, skills, and cards I can make quickly, since the pleasure is often in the playing and the making, maybe the true goal shouldn't be to save time, but instead use what time I have, make a store of finished cards I can grab and use as needed. I had a thought about that just this morning, but I'll save that for another post...
