Thank You Kindly Index Card and the Philosophy of Card Fronts


For a while now, I’ve been a member of the card front club.  That is, someone who participates in card front swaps and who creates card fronts when making new card projects.  I always told myself, “I’m saving cardstock this way” and some folks say it saves a lot of room when storing your cards.  cardfront_projectIt made perfect sense, right? Well, I realized that I’m not nearly as organized as I’d like to be and often I’m just grabbing a card last minute from my stash.  (Thankfully, I have a large enough stash, I can still tailor my choice to the recipient.)  In any event, I like to have my cards ready to go so I only have to write on the inside and put it in an envelope. 

So, this weekend I started project “turn cardfronts into cards”.  Over the course of three nights, I cut, scored, folded, and glued card bases to 46 of my cardfronts.  And last night, I finished the last card.  It was during this time that I realized that I like how cards look better when I go ahead and use a half sheet of cardstock for the card base instead of making a card front and later trying to line-up the front on a separately cut base (I wasn’t so good at that sometimes).  Plus, while I might be saving a few cents not using as much colored cardstock, sometimes it really does look nicer to have the color for the base (I even used a half sheet of colored cardstock for some of my cardfronts – definitely using more cardstock that way!).  So, now I’ve swung over to the “just do it” camp and will leave card fronts for pretty much swaps and special uses only.  I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on this topic though.  What do you like better?

 

Once that was all done last night, I didn’t have much time or energy for much else.  So, I tried working on my index card project.  I picked up my Thank You Kindly and some paper and got to work. 

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This was one of those times that you think you have a great card idea and as soon as you start stamping you realize that “great” isn’t quite the right adjective. 🙂  It also doesn’t help when you cut your cardstock and then realize you totally cut at the wrong sizes!  So, I kept tweaking it as I went until I got to the point where I knew it needed something but everything seemed too much.  So, I finally went with putting on the button latte buttons (I love, love, love these buttons!!!) because the empty space was driving me nuts.  So, while its not my most shining work, its not bad for a card that had to use every thank you sentiment in the stamp set and no other stamp set period.  I call this one good enough and will be moving on tonight to Simple Stems. I’m feeling a little more optimistic about that set.   

 

And yes, for those of you who left comments about my Video Game Live concert experience.  You are right, I had a camera. 🙂 Though the host actually encouraged use of recording devices at one point, so I don’t really feel bad.  Unfortunately, my pictures were mostly blurry so I can really only share the costume contest line up.  These were concert goers who dressed up for fun, glory, or a prize.

vglive_sm vglive2_sm


8 responses to “Thank You Kindly Index Card and the Philosophy of Card Fronts”

  1. Yes I think I would rather have full cards made up in my stash except that I am bad at not putting inserts in them until I need them.
    You did a very nice card considering the rules of the project. Pretty colours too!

  2. That’s a really interesting idea . . . card fronts. I’ve never heard of that before, but I can see where it would be less costly as well as more space efficient. I’ll bet you have a ton, huh? Hmmmm . . . something to think about!!

  3. As you know – I too only do card fronts for swaps. They just feel like a make do whenyou use card fronts no matter how great the design and exacution of the card front is.

  4. wow! i was doing the same thing the past few days.

    i participate in card front swaps mostly to have samples of sets that I do not have for my stampers – it is more economical paper wise. lately however, I have been trying to join full card front swaps because of the exact reason you mentioned not having to convert card fronts to full cards once the sets/products are retired by SU.

    I just finished converting the stash I had from previous years. I split the cards into two groups. One set goes to a fellow demonstrator who sends them to service men overseas so they can send greeting to their loved ones. The other set goes to my church for outreach to our members. I include envelopes to both groups and stamps to the church set (military mail is free *smile*).

    if you can find them, there are hostesses who do swaps with 4″ x 5 1/4″ card fronts. sure makes it easier to mount them onto the half sheets afterwards.

  5. I have never heard of card front swaps before, but it sounds very interesting and fun. I love you thank you index card and the buttons do an awesome job of filling in the empty space. The concert looks like it was fun.

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