Behind the Scenes - My Card Process

Hello Lovely!  Happy Friday!  We made it through the week, are you ready for the weekend?  I thought I'd take you behind the scenes and show you some clips of what happens when I'm knee deep in my creative process. 

If you follow me on social media, then you've seen my desk a lot, but I rarely take a pics of the die cutting table.  It usually looks like a tornado hit it about 90% of the time.  I clear it off when I can no longer stand to look at it.  That blue bin in the upper left is for die cuts that I cut but decide don't fit the project I'm working on.  The white basket is for scraps and bits that I've recently cut from.  That cute pink wire basket holds all my embossing folders.  Not pictured is the basket just on the other side of the pink one that holds all my dies.  

This next shot is of my stamping and embossing process.  VersaMark ink is my goto for stamping images I'm going to emboss.  I love Ranger and WOW embossing powders and I use a coffee filter to put my powders back in the jar.  Thanks to Jennifer McGuire for that tip. 

My habit is to make piles of cards at a time and then set up an assembly line, of cutting and gluing to finish a pile of cards all at once. 

The finishing included die cutting the inside panel and a label for the back, which I do for every, single card.  These are cut with the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Dies.

When the cutting is complete I set up my assembly line and cycle through each part of the card finishing. Each card is given an inside panel, a hand stamped branding label.

The final step is to sign every card with the year and my initials.

Then comes the photo shoot.  I photograph every card, usually with my DLSR, but not always.  I recently started using a lightbox and I wish I'd made that leap years ago!

Then it's all about packaging and listing.  Every card is put in a cello envelope with an envelope and a business card, then I add a price sticker.  Photos are edited and a watermark is added to the pics before they're uploaded and a listing is created in my shop.

The cards are stored in the trunk box until they're sold, gifted or mailed. 

Thanks for swinging by and checking out the process of making cards in my studio.  I hope you enjoyed this little behind the scenes look.