Stamps, Paper, Scissors

Get a Jump on Your Jingle

This past Saturday I held my very first holiday open house under the psychic compulsion of Shelli Gardner (may she live forever), which I called "Get a Jump on Your Jingle" in order to indoctrinate more people into the cult of SU! Are you a demo yet? We got a speccciiaalllll!!! You know you want it, c'mon!!! You will be assimilated, resistance is futile...

ANYWAY...I assemblied all kinds of objects with a psychic resonance which would compel those attending to order in mass quantities, all with a holiday theme. And I did have 5 people come, 4 of whom ordered, so it must have worked to a point...just not to the mass quantity point. I think there was a dampening field generated by the banks of these ladies...or maybe their husbands. However, it was lots of fun and more profitable than most of the open houses I have had, so I will make it an annual event. Assuming I'm still a demo next year, if my husband has not decided to have me deprogrammed.

I spent all of Friday evening assembling these objects, so naturally did not get around to designing a make and take for attendees until Saturday, two hours before show time! I fiddled around with a couple of ideas and finally came up with this, in my favorite color scheme:

We learned to do a card like this at our major indoctrination event of the year, CONVENTION, in the center of the known universe, Salt Lake City, where I got to again meet my cult-mistress, Shelli Gardner (may she live forever) and she *hugged me.* I'll pause to let that sink in.

Here she is with me...she is really quite a wonderfully nice person. I thought about not washing after this event, but consideration for my convention roomate made me change my mind. For another thing, Shelli actually touched my shirt, not me. I thought about not washing the shirt, putting it in a glass case for all eternity, but then I'd have to explain to people just WHY I had the shirt in the case and I don't think, for some reason, that they would GET IT.

Of course, this isn't the first time I'd met Shelli Gardner (may she live forever.) Here we are in Toronto:

And I even saw Shelli (may she live forever) just last month in Lansing...but I decided to be magnaminous and let others get their picture taken with her. And I thought she might just say, "YOU AGAIN?!?!?" Well, no I didn't...but it sounded good when I typed it the first time. My camera batteries had actually failed long before. Dang camera batteries.

ANYWAY, as you can see by the insert in the card photo above, by slightly offseting the Riveting piece (mounted on a dimensional) so that it overlaps the notch in the card front, you can tuck the cardfront behind the the Riveting piece, holding it closed. The card we did at CONVENTION, in Salt Lake City, center of the known universe, actually was done 180 degrees the other way; the tuck was at the top and the front of the card opened like a drawbridge. Very cute, but I like this better.

Before this card, I had messed around with this one:

I like it, but it was too fussy...you have to line up the different pieces of cardstock (four 4 1/4" squares scored down the middle and woven together) exactly right or it will not close properly.

And while my customers were looking at the objects of psychic resonance or shopping in THE BOOK, I messed around with a new color combination and got this; a card which refuses to be fancy, no matter what I tried to do to fancy it up. Sometimes, you just gotta stamp.

Whaddya do with the small open ended envies?

You may have noticed in our catalog this year that SU! has what are called open-ended envelopes. These envelopes, rather than opening at the top, open at one end (the short end of the rectangle.)

So, like the SU! cult member I am, I bought some of these things in July under psychic compulsion from my cult-mistress, Shelli Gardner (may she live forever), and they have sat in my drawer doing nothing ever since. I had some time to kill on Halloween after the kids were in bed, so I pulled them out, thinking I'd make a card or two that would fit in the envelopes.

The envelopes are 3 3/8" x 6 3/4". So the card would need to be 3 1/4" x 6 1/2" (6 1/2" x 6 1/2" before folding.) So I cut a piece of cardstock that size and got going. I chose another In Color combination off my chart (Real Red, Cool Caribbean, Not Quite Navy, Certainly Celery) and decided to do a donut card. I decided to pull myself away from the awful fascination of Flannel Plaid (undoubtedly another psychic compulsion from Shelli Gardner (may she live forever)) and with mighty effort, I pulled another background, Dotted, out of the stack and got going.

When I'd almost finished it, though, I realized, with one of those blinding flashes of intuition (they don't come too often with me, so I cherish them when they do) that this card was just a little bigger than a currency note! In fact, I pulled out a $20 bill and it was just a little narrower than the note...hmmm.....

Immediately, I abandoned my card base for one that had a flap that would fold in to hold the bill. I realized that I had to keep the adhesive to a very thin strip on the edge of the folded up flat or there wouldn't be enough room to put the bill in. I cut the flap on an angle so I only had to adhere one edge. And here is what I ended up with:

Now, I was mighty pleased with myself for actually doing something that used something that I hadn't done anything with since I bought it and was in love with the color combo and the Dotted background, as well as my own cleverness. Plus I thought it was STINKIN' CUTE and thought I should submit it to SU! (which I am going to!) And I looked at the interior and another blinding flash of sheer genius (yes, I love myself..heh heh) overcame me. How cool it would be if you could see the bill inside from the outside. And once you punched a hole through the front of the card, surely there would be a way of making the image on the bill, showing through, part of the design.

Now, one thing you may note about our currency is that those guys (Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson et al) don't look very cheerful at all. They look like they are stern fathers of our country (or yelling at you for spending them so freely, I don't know which.) None of which is very humorous or cheerful when presenting their faces as a gift. So I decided to lay on the whimsy and another brilliant flash of genius overcame me (yes, I love myself) and I got to work. I was up until 12:30 AM working on this...I tore it apart more than once trying to get it just right. And here it is:

Cold Play is the set I used to make this along with Riveting and the Dotted background. Isn't it cute? Even cuter than the other one. STINKIN' CUTE, in fact (yes, I love myself.)

I hasten to add that the Hamilton, on the $10 bill, does not work well with the same layout that works for Jackson ($20) and Lincoln ($5)...he is over too much to the left. And Washington is still dead center like he has been for years, so you would have to make major adjustments for him. Though if you have a habit of giving away $1 bills for presents, you have other adjustments to make, IMHO! And his head isn't as big, so it would look not quite in proportion. As far as bigger bills, though I don't normally have them around, my husband was gracious enough to lend them to me long enough to see that Grant ($50) and Franklin ($100) work just fine in this holder too (Franklin looks especially hilarious)...and if you are in the habit of giving those away for Christmas, I'd like to get to know you better!

So now they are in an envelope on the way to SU! and I have made myself another one of each to keep.

To make either one, cut your card base 6 1/2" x 9 1/2". Score at 3 1/4" and 6 1/2". The remaining 3" is for the flap.

To determine where to put my hole for the Cold Play card, I took the 1 3/8" circle punch, punched a piece of sticky note out and put it over the part of the bill I wanted to show through the hole. Then I put the bill on the cardfront in about the place I thought it would rest inside the card and took my paper piercing tool and poked a hole through the center of sticky note, through the bill and through the cardstock. I then removed the bill, put the sticky note back on the cardstock and punched using the punch trick. Then I used the punch trick again to make the holes in the flap (which I turned into a slot) and the matt on the front of the card.

I know, I know...you are saying, "But JAN!!! You already did this, so just tell us where the hole needs to go so we don't have to do that!!!" You guys...you want everything! But I am so nice (along with being a genius...yes, I love myself!) that I will tell you:

For Mr. Franklin, Mr. Grant, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. Lincoln, the left edge of the hole needs to be 2 3/16" from the left side of the cardfront and the bottom of the hole needs to be 5/8" from the bottom of the cardfront. If you are making a holder for Mr. Hamilton, move the hole to 1 7/8" from the left side. And if you are making one for Mr. Washington...let's not go there.

I used a Scotch ATG gun to glue my flap down, but if you don't have one of those, use sticky strip...and use half the width...otherwise, not enough room to slide your bill in.

So now, you can make one of these, insert the bill of your choice and send me one for a present!!!