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The other day finishing some notecards in The Forest series (where I print with ephemera from our forest -- feathers, twigs, cedar etc) I was struck by how many decisions even a small art project requires.
In the early stages of developing the series I trialed both Stonehenge printmaking natural white card blanks and a tan card stock.
The tan cardstock was a little light for 5x7-inch cards and I decided to work solely with the heavier printmaking blanks. But I liked the look of the prints on the tan. And the day's project was to finish the small number of tan prints as a gift for a friend.
A lightweight card can be given a substantial presence with a paper liner. Like with the cards below -- my first attempt several years ago at carving a wood block.
Here, I'd stamped a coordinating image on the liner. So it didn't compete with the cover print I used lots of transparent ink creating an almost watermark-like effect. Something like that might work nicely with the forest prints. But I had cream paper on hand -- a heavyweight printer paper with a faint pattern that resembled vellum.
Okay! Going with the cream paper. Then a quick decision on how to attach the liner. Sometimes it's a swipe of glue stick but my preferred method adds a nice handcrafted touch. The elegant pamphlet stitch detailed in this post. Now to choose a thread and a colour for the binding.
From the top is a rust crewel yarn, three colours of embroidery thread, a cream crochet cotton and, finally, black embroidery thread. My first choice was the crewel yarn. It had a beautiful twist and the colour was so rich. But it almost overpowered the images. The black was too much. In the end, I went with the cream crochet cotton.
Now, a three-hole pamphlet stitch or a five? I was only binding a single sheet of paper so the three was ample.
A tricky decision next. Knot on the inside of the card? Or the outside?
Liked both but decided I wanted the knot to show. But how long to leave the ends? (I know, this gets ridiculous! But I love the finishing details.)
I do like the energy of the longer tails but I know, from experience, what a pain these longer tails can be at the packaging stage. So short it is.
Now my favourite part -- finishing up the back of the notecard.
A number of small decisions here. Tiny feather prints or a stamped 'forest'? Torn strips of paper, cut paper, circles?
I won't go into all the decisions the website label required. Those were largely made years ago. So, hey, we're done!
