Making Multiple Encouragement Cards for Essential Employees

 Hello Crafters! 

I'm sharing this blog post a little out of order from the videos but 

hey, what isn't a little turned around right now? 

I recently shared that I had been struggling a bit to create due to all the happenings in the world currently. Eric suggested making cards for the helpers might help me to like I had a bigger purpose in my creating. 

So today my friends we are mass producing. 

You can stop at any one of these steps and have a beautiful card. OR do some or all. Whatever floats your boat. 

Mass producing is a great way to get a large amount of cards out very quickly. However, I have a hang up with mass producing. I get bored. There's a reason none of my cards are duplicates haha. 

I have found that making the same card in different colors helps me to feel like it's just different enough. My first tip is doing all the things at the same time. Like a little assembly line. Stamp, emboss, ink, and stencil. 

Heads up here, a stamp positioner will make this super easy. I used my MISTI. If you don't have you can certainly stamp them with blocks it'll just take a little longer. Treat your cardstock with your anti-static tool and stamp in embossing ink. I stamped my anchor and my sentiment at the same time. I then sprinkled on white embossing powder and heat set it until it was smooth and melted. 

Making all the embossing the same color is another way to make it fast which is why I went with white. It's a neutral that matches everything! 

I want to note here that for the gray I did not add any ink. I wanted you to see that the card can be just as beautiful without doing all the steps that I did. Once the heat embossing was done I moved on to the inking. I used two colors of distress ink for each one to help the embossing POP off the page. Not all of them needed the added contrast, in fact most of them didn't. But the bright colors do! The yellow and green were very hard to read before adding the distress ink. 

Now I said with the gray I didn't add any ink, which you can see above. I did add the glimmer paste to all the cards though and I have to be honest that's where the wow factor is. 

I used Glimmer Paste in the color Moonstone which is a white/clear glitter that basically takes on the color of whatever you put it over. It's my favorite Glimmer Paste and by far the one I use the most. You can use colored glitters. They'd be beautiful BUT you will not be able to go over the anchor and sentiment like I did. You could of course die cut the anchor and sentiment out and adhered them over top of the glimmer paste and everything would still be legible. 

I did notice as I was moving along stenciling that in some of the holes the glue was drying. So on some of the cards the lines are a bit more sporadic but it doesn't bother me. If that bother you consider washing it halfway through to clear out the dried glitter. 

I hope these cards inspired you to start making for those who are working so hard to still keep our world turning during this difficult time. 

You can see my whole process in the video below 

Thank you so much for stopping by! 

Supplies:

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RADIANT BACKGROUND STENCIL Shop at: HB	Honey Bee Stamps Anchors The Soul Shop at: HB	Anchors The Soul Honey Cuts Shop at: HB

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