Tag Archives: Card

Origami Wishes

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Today I’m working on my New Year’s ‘cards‘ that I will send to some close friends. I don’t do xMas cards anymore, call me a rebel but I try to make a difference and not follow the crowd blindly so I craft my own ‘cards‘ and try to turn it into something special each year instead of the regular stuff that is out there in the supermarkets. I want those that are special to me to receive something special, it’s about making the effort…

I’ll use my favourite paper that I bought in London at the Chinese wholesaler where I used to get my Asian groceries. I bought loads of the coloured kind and only a few sheets of the paper I’m now using for the ‘cards‘. The girl at the till asked me why I bought that much paper so I said to her that I’m a graphic designer and I just love the quality of it. She just responded with a quiet ‘oh…’ but I realised what she was thinking.

You see, this paper has a totally different meaning to the Chinese than it has to me, to me it’s ‘just’ another piece of beautiful paper that I can use to design something special. Paper made of rice or bamboo fibers with a beautiful coarse texture of ‘laidlines’. To the Chinese it’s ‘ghost money’ and used as an offering to worship the ancestors and to ensure that the spirit of the deceased has all the good things in the afterlife.

I don’t see why I couldn’t use it for another purpose: I think I’m only complementing this beautiful paper. I’ve chosen to hide my New Year’s wishes inside a cute Origami design and since it’s all handmade I’m only gonna send a few to a select company of people. Only those who will appreciate the effort, so instead of the ‘usual’ twenty five xMas New Year’s cards, I’ll reduce that to ten this year. Why only ten people?

Because I’m limiting some friendships… It’s time to shift the focus from others to myself and some of these so-called friendships simply seem too unbalanced so I’d rather nurture the more rewarding ones. I’d like to thank those who sent me a (digital) xMas message, some came as a total surprise to me *happy smile* Mine is -as you can read- still in the making and soon on it’s way around the world *wink*.

‘This above all: to thine own self be true.’

~Shakespeare

©Zesty Gal Beautiful paper… waiting to be cut and folded

©Zesty Gal Beautiful paper… waiting to be cut and folded

Bold Print

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I received the wedding announcement a while ago but forgot to put it online. I have designed it, created the artwork and send it off to the Lowlands to have it printed there. I’m happy with the result in general, there’s just one thing that’s bugging me which I noticed straight away when the card came in. I wanted a bright shiny varnish on the front. It’s a porthole and I wanted the ‘glass’ to be shiny. Also on the inside, I wanted the heart shape of the tattoo shiny.
Unfortunately the printer chose the wrong type of paper [that’s what you get for not being able to be there to sort things out] and ended up applying about 5 coats of varnish without getting the result that I wanted. I must admit I was disappointed but I reckon due to circumstances I wasn’t able to correct this, there was simply not enough time. Although I had left plenty of time to have it printed, the printer probably didn’t see this coming until the last moment. Which clearly states ‘no professional’ to me.
I don’t know this printer, he wasn’t my choice, the one that I used to work with for years never replied to my questions when I sent him an email about the assignment. So I gave up on him too. A shame because I know he would’ve done it perfectly fine. It frustrates me at times that people tend to ignore emails, they just don’t respond to them, what’s the point then in having a website and email address available for enquiries? I don’t know any good printer in London yet, I should look into this. But I couldn’t have done it here anyway since it needed to be send from the Lowlands.
I chose for the theme of a porthole and old school tattoo design because T. works and lives on a river barge. Even though I wasn’t happy with the varnish, the fact that they received so many responses -each and every one of them very positive- made it all worth it. After all if they are happy with the announcement and if others are too then that’s the biggest compliment I could get…