“We need 20 handmade thank-you cards to send to a group of sales reps for one of our distributors please” was management’s request.  Now that’s the kind of assignment we love to take on—and it showcases one of our favorite papercrafting products – Fantastiques! 

Robot's Best Friend

Popcorn For Two

Trice Boerens designed these beautiful watercolor illustrations of whimsical characters and creatures. You just pop out their heads and limbs from the book, and attach them to one of the photographic torsos from the back pages, or create your own torsos with found objects…or try needlefelting one, like I did for the little doggie shown here (here’s a great book on needlefelting dogs, by the way)

With Fantastiques, your greeting cards practically design themselves…the characters’ expressive faces do all the work—it’s really fun to imagine what they might be thinking and then match it to the sentiment of your card.  In order to make 20 cards quickly, we created a simple background design using velvet paper, inked edges and ribbons for a textural contrast. Then comes the popping-out party! Mixing and matching body parts with cute little brads was such a kick! We adhered them to the background with just a few raised glue dots, so the arms and legs can move around.

So our heartfelt thanks was written inside each card, and they have been sent to a group of new reps who will be working very hard to sell our books and products.  You can see all 20 cards in the Fantastiques Flickr group…I’m totally addicted to these little guys….once you get some for yourself, you’ll know what I mean!  :-)

Related posts:

1. Mixed Media Ultra-Light Lutradur® Greeting Cards
2. Free Project: Summer’s End fabric postcard
3. The art of letter correspondence…and the snail mail folio
4. Sun Ray Quilt Project by Alex Anderson
5. Free quilt project – Pinwheel