Most of the greeting cards I make can be given to just about anyone, but sometimes I design one for a specific person. For me, making a custom card is incredibly rewarding. With the aid of a computer, printer, and my daughter’s drawing skills, I made this one-of-a-kind greeting card last week. I’ve been waiting to share it until it arrived at the recipient’s home.
My father-in-law is adventurous when it comes to cooking and he recently decided to make pickled hotdogs. (Pickling hotdogs is out of my realm of imagination, so I didn’t even know that people do this on a regular basis.) After three weeks of marinating, he taste-tested them over a Zoom call with my husband and they laughed themselves to tears for at least fifteen minutes. My husband asked me to make a card to commemorate the occasion. (We’re a little goofy that way.)
I dusted off the retired Stampin’ Up set Jar of Love and its coordinating batch of dies to make this card. I have a large collection of stamps, but a hotdog stamp isn’t numbered among them. My daughter is a gifted artist, so I commissioned her to draw and color the hotdogs in the jar.
I found a font that resembles the typeface on a Ball jar and printed a custom label. (The font is called Ave Fendan and you can find it at dafont.com. It is free for personal use.) I circle-punched my custom text and adhered it to a Grapefruit Grove tag made from the Story Label punch. I wanted the card to have a county fair feel to it, so I placed a swatch of Daffodil Delight gingham paper behind the jar. I chose the woodgrain background paper because I wanted the card to seem rustic.
As I said before, the Jar of Love stamp set is retired. However, the new annual catalog, which will go live on June 3rd, contains a similar set called Jar of Flowers, a coordinating punch, and mason-jar shaped shaker domes.
I recommend two easy (and cheap) ways to further customize your one-of-a-kind greeting card. First, find a font that compliments your stamp set and print out sentiments tailored to the card recipient. Second, doodle or sketch extra elements if you have the artistic skills (or a daughter who can do it for you).
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