Need a good 12-step program...

My name is Molly. And I am an envelope hoarder.

{hello, molly..... hi...}

Today, I'm having a "playdate" with the pop-up making mom that I met recently (the Peacock Lane excursion).

I decided to give my craft cabinet a once over, as it's pretty embarrassing. It looked likethe "before" shot from one of those extreme makeover shows.

In the course of removing things (odd random things: a Bill Clinton cat toy, miniature anvil, 3D glasses, a web-programming book, etc) I came across packs of envelopes. And more packs of envelopes. And a lot of loose envelopes.

Apparently my modus operendus when designing a card is to glance briefly inside my cabinet, become cowed by the mess and then run out and buy more. I also apparently never walk by a sale on envelopes without picking up a bargain.

I needed envelopes for my recent princess invitations and had to dash out and buy some yesterday. I was disappointed to find no colored envelopes in the size I needed and settled for white, little realizing that I already had the perfect pink envelopes.

I've spent the morning sorting everything into piles and stashing all my envelopes into a box. Okay, let's be honest: "boxes."

This year, instead of the typical resolutions (lose weight, get buff, become a better person, promote world peace) I am resolving to gain control of my envelope habit.

Wish me luck!

Sliceforms

My friend, Bill, and his wife do freelance graphic design. We'd talked, briefly, about doing some clever pop-up marketing together in the past.

This evening, he sent me this url, for a company that creates some very cute snowglobe promotional products: http://shop.3dpapergraphics.com/

Check out their very clever use of clear plastic with print. Very nice!

Their use of sliceforms, which is what these types of popups are called, is not particularly new, however they do a very nice job of an old idea.

If you're interested in learning about how to create your own sliceforms, check out cpeep's tutorial to create a sliceform christmas tree.

After getting Bill's email this evening, I took it upon myself as a personal challenge to replicate the snowglobe in sliceform fashion. The model on the left is very rough, but I just wanted to show that I could do it. 

I was impressed with how it folds completely flat, but then expands easily to form a very solid-seeming object.

(I also add, that, in addition to designing the snowglobe sliceform, I also got dinner on the table, gave two squirmy boys baths, read them a bedtime story, checked my email, made a few ox cards and did a comp for a (sold!) princess card at the same time -- life can be challenging for the working mom with hobbies!)

Naturally, the snowglobe design that 3D Graphics created and are marketing is patented and should not be copied for commercial use, which I wouldn't do. I just wanted to prove that I could figure it out.

Sliceforms, on the other hand, are a widely used technique. I just have to figure out a clever way to use them (that isn't snowglobes). 

For another reference that discusses sliceforms, see Paper in Three Dimensions, which shows you how to create an Eiffel Tower using this technique.

Many solid shapes can easily be converted to a sliceform... it's fun! Give it a try!

flexagon

My brother-in-law, Alec, got me a GREAT book for Christmas called Magic Books and Paper Toys.

It is AWESOME! There are some very creative and innovative little paper items, along with some classic ideas, like cootie catchers. I very much recommend it if you are looking for some interesting ideas to try.

One toy that they feature is what they call a flexagon. This is a paper toy that you unfold. And unfold. And unfold. You can continue to unfold it forever, which seems impossible and is terribly hard to describe, so please look over these photos of a flexagon that I created for my brother-in-law as a thank you for the nice gift.

 
 
 
 

For another kind of flexagon from the same book, check out this recent post from a fellow blogger (and new-found paper buddy): http://extremecards.blogspot.com/2009/01/flexigon.html

Princess and Knight Birthday Party Invitations

I read somewhere that one of the top birthday party themes was a princess theme. 

Not a fish theme. Not jungle animals. Not even circuses or carnivals.

Princesses. 

I would never have imagined.

I guess that having only boys can slant your view of the world.

In any case, I did a little hunt of available princess invitations and wasn't terribly impressed with a lot of them.  Finding a reasonably priced invitation that was also aesthetically pleasing seemed like a castle in the air. I wondered if I could do better.

As always, I looked on http://www.istockphoto.com for artwork and came across not only a sweet little pink-gowned princess, but also a stalwart knight. Perfect! I would have something to offer to both boys and girls!

I purposefully left the design extremely simple. No fancy paper engineering here. In this way, I'm able to keep the price quite low yet, hopefully, avoid that problem of not being able to pay myself minimum wage for my time. I think these are quite reasonably priced.

• View my Princess Birthday Party Invitation
• View my Knight Birthday Party Invitation
  

If you have ideas for some party ideas for either or both of these medieval themes, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you!

Volcano Card Mechanics

I have really enjoyed making my Chinese New Year, Year of the Ox Cards. It's a very simple design, but I've learned a lot by examining it and seeing how it needs to be constructed, geometrically, to stand up and to also fold flat.

After making more than a dozen, I realized that it would not be difficult to add a separate element that would create movement as the person opened the card. The action of opening the card pulls the two parts of the base of the ox apart. Then this happens, the ox becomes shorter than if it were standing straight upright. If I were to add a freestanding piece that stood in the fold of the card, that piece would actually rise as the rest of the popup piece moved down. This is a little hard to explain, but bear with me, as there are photos to come.

(note, I didn't "invent" this bit of engineering. I know I've seen it in before, by much more talented paper engineers than me, however this was for me, a truly "aha!" moment when I finally understood how to make it work)






I first decided to try this mechanism to make the puff of smoke on a volcano shoot upward. The boy's sixth birthday party had a prehistoric theme and I would have loved to have an invitation like this.

When making something complex it is often quicker to work out the mechanics in plain white cardstock before adding in the artwork.

It's a little hard to see from these pix, but can you see how the plume of smoke moves upward when the card is fully opened?

That is because the base of the smoke sits right at the fold. The two bases of the volcano sit some distance away. As the card is opened, the two bases of the volcano move away from each other, essentially making the volcano become shorter.

Once I had worked out the mechanics of how the volcano would work, I added in the artwork. It was simple to add in a dinosaur as a separate pop-up piece.

I was pleased that the whole thing folded neatly flat.

I like this piece very much, though it still needs additional polish and a nice contrasting piece of cardstock to be mounted upon, as well as a clever bit of text on the front to tease the recipient.

There are some constructions challenges with this card, though. The plume of smoke needs to be constructed in pieces (because both the base and the puff of smoke are too big to fit through the hole at the top of the volcano), requiring some finicky-ness that would make it difficult to mass produce easily. I would have to charge extra for the additional time it would take to construct the piece.

I might still complete it and post it to see if I get any nibbles. You never know!

My First Circus Invitation Sale!

I have had my first sale of the circus invitations!

It's funny that this is the first sale of these invitations ever, because, of all my listings, this one generates, by far, the most interest. I can see this by how many people view my blog postings about them.

Anyway, Lena was my first circus invitation customer, ordering 50 invitations. She asked for, and received, a few customizations, including a "Ringling Brothers" type logo treatment for her kids' names for the back of the card, the addition of a clown to the images that appear in the tent doorway, and, of course, her children's faces added to the images.

They came out great!

It took me FOREVER to print out, cut and assemble all the invitations, work that I spread out over several days. After many hours of work, I had to wonder if I were making at least minimum wage.

Still, it was satisfying to finally put the package together for her. In addition to the 50 ordered invitations, I included all the comps that I created before we got one that was approved (five extra cards), stickers for the backs of the envel0pes with the exclusive type treatment that I designed for her and a few bonus envelopes (I always mess up on one or two envelopes when I'm addressing them).

Here's the etsy listing for these: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=25788953

Chinese New Year's Cards

Yowza! I finally got nice photos of the Chinese New Year's cards taken this morning and posted two options on etsy: a single card for $3.50 or a pack of ten for $30. After running some errands, I checked my email and was elated to discover that one of my single cards had sold!

Wow!

I've never had that kind of immediate gratification before (I've always had to wait weeks or months. And no one, to date, has purchased my Interactive Beer Congratulations card yet, which is what started this whole thing).

Anyway, I ran around quite dazzled, eager to put the package together and get it off first thing in the morning.

When that was done, I sat down to check my email "to see if I'd sold anything else," and, by gum, I had! I'd actually sold a pack of ten cards!

So, this has been a good day for sales for me.

I was sharing my news with a friend who asked me what my profit margin was on something like this. The cost of the card stock, envelope and ink ends up being only about $.40 or so, which, for $3.00 for each card in the ten pack, sounds like a tidy profit until you factor in the time it takes to cut and assemble each invitation. Even paying myself at minimum wage, I'm not making a huge profit.

Also, factor in the fact that in order to make these cards, I had to spend $40 on deep red card stock (for 250 sheets, which will keep me "in the red" for a good long time!), so currently, I'm in the hole for these cards.

So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more sales this month so I can at least break even! And, honestly, part of it's just the thrill of designing something that people actually like enough to spend money on!