Petit four cards

I often have to mail a single ATC or a small handful of inchies, and I like to nestle my art in a small, flat card, nothing too special. Today I made a bunch of them, using the Petit Four technique from the Technique Junkies newsletter. Basically, you cut four cards out of a 12x12 piece of cardstock, and score it in such a way that it makes a sort of gate fold.

I was looking through my designer paper, looking at the Easter prints, when I came across a sheet that had 4 potted plants across the bottom, and a soft print over the rest of the sheet. Papers like this are great for scrapbooking, but usually not so good for cards. It was double sided cardstock, so it wouldn't need much decoration, but how was I going to get the images on the outside right side up? I wasn't, and then it hit me that they would look great on the inside.

Here's my card, closed (3x6 inches). The only embellishment is an embossed butterfly, glued to the top fold.



This is how it looks with the bottom fold flipped open, so you can see the plant.


Cool, huh? I knocked out four of these in just a couple of minutes - perfect for holding my little artsy cards.

Shout Outs

I make those funky little cards that I call "Shout Outs". they are 3.25 by 4.25 inches, just the size to cut 3 from a standard sheet of cardstock. I make them specifically for one purpose - to mail a single ATC. I don't like to put just an ATC in an envelope, I like something to surround and protect it, and a shout out is just the thing. I have a few rules for my shout outs:

1. They have to be flat. no ribbons or brads or other lumpy things are allowed. They are supposed to make my little ATCs easier to mail, not harder.
2. It can't take longer than 10 minutes to make all three of them. These are not "real" cards, they are just protective coverings.
3. They have to be ugly - I don't want the recipient to feel like they have to treasure it, and I especially don't want them to feel bad if they sent me an ATC without anything else.

I usually build them from scraps laying on my crafting desk, and often they will consist of gluing a failed ATC glued to a base. Not today, however - I had a small branch of silk leaves lying on my desk, so I used them instead.



It is easy to get silk flowers and leaves to lie flat if you take off the plastic bits. You can see the glue where it smeared around the edges, and the white speckles are glitter that came on the leaves. The orange paper was a scrap lying on my cutting tray, and the faux stitching is very fast if you use the Drywall stitching technique.

No one should have any difficulty tossing this out.