Barbara Close

Twenty creative people got together in a Solana Beach church classroom, on a foggy and drizzly November 9, 2002. The weather didn’t dampen our spirits; we were on a mission to create beautiful greeting cards!

Barbara Close gave us a handout with seven different card designs, and we were eager to get to working on them. Barbara’s cards are miniature works of art. She showed us numerous samples; some were geometric, some were soft in structure, but all were very beautiful. Barbara says that cards can make us feel humorous, romantic, affectionate, ironic, informative, happy, and even melancholy. Cards celebrate personal events such as birthdays, anniversaries, new babies, new houses, new jobs, and reunions. They also mark national and religious holidays. With so many celebrations, what better thing to do than send a personalized and unique greeting card?

The first thing when designing a card is to consider the end purpose: will this card eventually be mass-produced, or will it be one-of-a-kind? You need to think of the envelope size and the postal regulations. What about the message you want to say on your card? (Barbara provided us with a page of inspirational messages such as “Friends are flowers in the garden of life” or “I’m so lucky to have found you”—ideas to add to our creativity in designing.

Our first card involved watercolor. We separated into two groups of 10 since the watercolor would take time to dry. This was a very efficient idea! Barbara encouraged us to keep exploring and experimenting. She said, “Don’t think of failure each time you’ll get better and better.” She was helping us to set ourselves up for success rather than be afraid to perform in front of others. This card was a foldover card with a self-envelope. We first took a really big round brush and dipped it into nice colors of watercolor paint and then painted a variety of long strokes. Then we sprinkled some gold powder on the wet paint and let it dry. After it was dry, we brought our pieces back to the table to give it a black Oriental calligraphy look. We took the wood side of a brush (opposite of the bristles), dipped it into sumi ink, and scribbled throughout the painted brush strokes, making our scribbles as chaotic and spontaneous as possible (thick, thin, blots, and dots). After this dried, we folded the paper into a point, used an X-acto knife to make a cut, so the card folded into itself.

While one group did the watercolor foldover project, the other one did the 3- birthday candles using upside down yellow cutout hearts for the flames. The candles were brightly colored construction paper cutouts, raised with a foam sticky-back tape. We drew cute squiggles and dots to add to the festiveness of the card. On the front, we calligraphed the statement, “Happy Birthday”. On the inside

Patt Miller creating the birthday candle card.

it said, “It’s not how many candles that count, but how bright the flame. Have a happy birthday.”I gave this card to my 87-year old mother-in-law. She said it was her favorite card ever!

Our third masterpiece was the Birthday Cut-Out with Ribbon. On a 5"x7" piece of card stock, we used ribbons and various colors of card stock to create something which had a nice finished, polished feel to it. Through the window we wrote the message HAPPY BIRTHDAY and used colored pencils to shade the areas between the letters. When you open up the card, the additional words are TO YOU.!




Olivia Ramirez’s cutout card with ribbon.

We then moved on to the Panel Card with Brass Rod Hinges. You could use welding rods, skewers, or wire hangers, but Barbara provided us with welding rods. We first cut black panels 4"x 6", then made some cut tabs from decorated paper scraps. We folded these in half diagonally and hole-punched the centers (and also hold-punched the black panels). We used glue to place the decorated papers and rods in place, then tied the panels together with embroidery thread. Most of us didn’t have time to add collage pieces or lettering for embellishments, but they'll be beautiful pieces once done.


	Barbara shared another interesting idea: take exciting fabric and go to a place with a color copier and copy the fabric onto watercolor paper!


	Terrilyn’s hinged panel card


	Barbara Close’s example of the hinged panel card.




		Patt Miller making her hinged panel card.



				Rachael Paddock Collins

The next fun project was the Fold-over with Paper Buttons, which was a cute way to make a foldover card that wraps with cord, twine or ribbon. Then we made the Collage with Panel of nine one-inch squares. Every person’s card was unique. The border sizes varied (we literally “thought outside of the box”). We cut these squares into geometric shapes, not worrying whether the lines were straight. This just gave it a more freeform look. We then adhered these cut squares onto another panel and created yet another. The last card of the afternoon was the Accordion-fold Interlock card. We took three pieces of cardstock, cut them into squares, then scored and folded them diagonally, and after doing some virtual origami-type maneuvering and pasting of the two outside pieces onto the center piece…voilà, a most amazing interlocking card was created. We could add lettering or cute rubber stamps on all the squares. It flattened down, and you could tie the whole thing together, or just send it as is in an envelope.

This was a fun-filled, creative day. It was a workshop which sparked lots of ideas for future project

By Rachael Paddock Collins