Business Envelope Sized Greeting Cards

 The April 2023 Party Call exchange of stencil-printed art is now underway in the StencilGirl StencilClub.  This exchange provided a fun challenge for me, since I'd never designed greeting cards of a size and shape to fit into business-sized envelopes.  Linda Edkins Wyatt, a fellow designer at StencilGirlProducts.com, is the brave and energetic soul who's leading the exchange, and  business-sized greeting cards are her brainchild.

A fellow member of StencilGirl StencilClub has Messaged me and in so doing, prompted me to add to this earlier post.  

It's rare to find greeting cards shaped to fit business-sized envelopes.  So the idea might throw some people.  

One approach I suggest is making a template for the project.  First, fold a sheet of copy paper in half.  Place it under a business-sized envelope.  Trace around the envelope to reveal the parts of the paper that need to be cut off, since those areas wouldn't fit into an envelope of this size and shape.  Cutting off those areas leaves you with a template of copy paper; just unfold the copy paper and place it atop the background paper for the greeting card.  Trace around the copy paper; then cut that out. Voila! You now have a perfect-sized background, ready to be decorated into a greeting card.

Of course, some people will just take measurements and work from them in getting the right size for the background paper.  I dislike doing that myself because I never get measurements exactly right.  It would help if I would buy a better quality T-square!

I'll be exchanging with only one other StencilClub member, but once I got going, I liked the challenge so much that I made three of these greeting cards....

The print on the greeting card above was made using 6" x 6" Ferns Stencil s100.   This stencil itself looks like this:

Below:  Today's second greeting card, also made to fit a business sized envelope, was created as a collage built with pieces of prints made using 9" x 12" Garden Montage L652....

Garden Montage L652 itself looks like this:

Today's last greeting card, sized to fit a business envelope, is below. 

The figure above was cut from paper printed multiple times with stencils and masks including the 4-piece collection Abstract Composition Backbones Masks.  (The background paper on the greeting card is actually a lighter blue altho here it appears nearly black!) 

These masks, shown below, provide guidelines that can serve as scaffolding in developing abstracts with composition that pleases the eye.

6" x 6" Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 1 s864

6" x 6" Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 2 s8655

6" x 6" Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 3 s866

6" x 6" Abstract Composition Backbones Mask 4 s867

I'd decided to use a vertical format in making my greeting cards, but a horizontal format could be even better!

Do you love making greeting cards the way I do?  Have you tried making them long and narrow, to fit into business-sized envelopes?  Challenging ourselves is always a good idea!

Thanks for visiting my blog today!  To scroll thru the pages of my masks and stencils at StencilGirlProducts.com, please start here.