Filed under: card, design, doodle, gift, paper by ramune

Bear in Heaven – Sinful Nature

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I realize owls have been “hip” lately and it’s hard to go into a Paper Source without tripping all over the owl salt shakers, aprons, thumb tacks and stationery. As tired as I am of the over-saturation of all the owl paraphernalia, I cannot deny that owls are pretty swell creatures and I like drawing them, so here it is . . . an owl birthday card I made for someone who also likes owls.

Filed under: card, design, doodle, favorites, gift, holiday, paper by ramune

The Octopus Project – Music Is Happiness

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Octopi . . . what’s not to love? They are super intelligent and have a unique and amazing look to which I am consistently drawn. If I’m going to do anything for Valentine’s Day, I generally like to make something rather than buy a teddy bear or some other item that expresses one of many canned sentiments. This year I wanted to make a card with a bit of depth, so went with a layered pop-up card/diorama idea that seemed like the perfect opportunity to test out my cutting and diorama-creating skills. I am pretty happy with the result and think I might start making more of these.

Note: My Valentine gave me a card with octopi on it as well. Good taste!

Filed under: design, favorites, friends, paper by ramune

A few weeks ago my friend Vaiva and I dropped by Philly for a night to visit our friend Rasa and help with any wedding planning/decompressing/relaxing. One of the things we did that day was help come up with themes for the tables at the wedding. After a few duds it was decided that the theme would be different kinds of leaves. I volunteered to make the leaves and the seating chart for the wedding and I am pretty excited with the results. At one point I sent Rasa a text message with a photo of the first two leaves I had cut and she asked if they were real.

The green leaves were for all of the guest tables and the gold leaves were for the head table.

In total I hand cut 39 leaves out of card stock. It was fun and completely worth it even if my wrist was screaming a few times during those spiky leaves.

Two of my favorite (and most difficult/time consuming) leaves to cut were the sycamore and chestnut leaves. Please excuse the distracting blur used to protect the innocent (and not so innocent).

I am not sure who suggested it or if it was a joke at first, but the leaf chosen for the head table was an Ent leaf. This posed a challenge because there is no one Ent leaf (well, there is no such thing as an Ent either . . . or is there?) and I didn’t want to make it too cheesy.

Len the Oak Ent

Rasa the Maple Ent

The seating charts were posted on a column in front of the garage (the reception was in a tent in the driveway and the food was served from a nicely disguised garage).

The centerpieces came together quite well I think. The wood bases were made by Aistis (a fellow friend of the family) and the Krupnikas (Lithuanian honey liquor in the little bottles) was made by my friends Vaiva and Aleksa earlier this summer when we were in Philly.

Since I was in the wedding I didn’t take too many photos, but I managed to get a few here and there. It all came together so well considering all the stress involved. Rasa planned the entire wedding herself with help from family and friends. The ceremony and reception were both at her parents’ house and her catering company catered the event. Those of us who were there before the wedding, from the locals to those who came a week to a few hours before, all helped out in the kitchen, setting up and doing pretty much anything else that needed to get done. All in all, it was a fantastic time!

Filed under: card, paper by ramune

For the past week I have been visiting my family in the Chicago suburbs and have spent most of my time with my aunt and three of her five kids. The oldest two are at a Lithuanian camp for the entire month, so those of us back in the ‘burbs made cards to send to them (everyone loves getting cards at camp, and these girls were about to get inundated). At first I was thinking of drawing something camp related, but then I remembered how much I loved making pop-up cards as a kid, so I made two shell pop-up cards for the girls. This makes me want to get back into paper cutting.

Filed under: favorites, paper, self-portrait by ramune

This past week I have been quite busy working on my resume and my website. Although working on my resume has involved creativity, I doubt anyone wants to see it (unless you are looking to hire me . . . wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean). If you do want to see it, it will be up on my portfolio site once it is all polished up.

Back to this week’s creative project! Ever since I saw the paper dolls at Readymech, I have wanted to create my own. After spending some time trying to come up with a character, I decided to do a self portrait of sorts. I have included some photos as well as a pdf so you can print out and build your own little me (if you really want a small boxy version of me staring at you). Unfortunately my printer is not that great and colors tend to look better on screen, so the colors are a bit off in the constructed version. Also, I won’t be offended if you cut my thumbs off, they can be a bit of a pain to cut around.

Filed under: holiday, paper by ramune

As has been the trend lately, I am late again with my every-seven projects. This past week I have been in Chicago for Christmas with a whole bunch of my extended family, so I have been busy with family stuff.

Here are photos of the Christmas card I worked on last week. They vary a bit since I managed not to save the file for 24 hours and then my computer crashed, so I had to start over almost from scratch. Either way, it is a three layered card. The top layer has snowflakes on a transparency, the second layer has mountains on a vellum-like paper and the bottom layer has mountains and my Christmas greeting. I stitched the layers together (and almost broke the sewing machine while doing it) with blue thread.

I hope that those of you who received them enjoyed them! I had fun making them.

2007 Christmas card

Detail showing the three layers of the Christmas card

Bottom layer of Christmas card

Filed under: holiday, paper, process by ramune

This past week I have been busy designing, printing and assembling Christmas cards, which I am hoping to have sent out this coming week. Since some people reading this blog will be getting said cards this week and next, I did not want to show too much of the card just yet. In the meantime I figured I would show my highly organized working space . . . my floor.

My favorite place to work . . . on the floor.

Filed under: holiday, paper by ramune

In the spirit of Christmas, here is a snowflake I made out of some origami paper I had lying around. If you want to create your own, you can find directions here.

Red, Green and White 3D Paper Snowflake