Corregated Cardboard "Sleeve" Card

Can you find inspiration from a piece of cardboard? Yep. This is how things happen sometimes. Kathleen's card inspired Lorri. Lorri's card inspired mine. Why I never thought of this, even though I handle approximately 200 sleeves a day, is beyond me. And the crafter who DID think of this? She doesn't drink coffee or tea! Just goes to show you that creative catalysts are abundant.

If you want to create the look of a coffee cup sleeve, all you need is a piece of corregated cardboard from any box. As you can see from the picture, although you probably already knew this if you enjoy nitpicking of any kind, cardboard is a sandwich of two thin layers of paper covering a fluted piece of fiberboard. You can read all about it here. To achieve the desired effect, simply remove one of the layers of paper to expose the fluted innards. Voila--you have a great card element!

I need a get-well card for a friend of mine who broke her leg a month ago. I always want to watercolor the images from Morning Cup, so I stamped the mug and the percolator on watercolor paper with Early Espresso Classic Ink. Brown Staz-on ink would've been better, but I don't have any, and as long as you don't use too much H20, you'll be okay.

I used my Stampin' Write Markers in Crumb Cake and Poppy Parade and didn't color the images completely. I laid down some heavy color on the edge and then used my Aqua Painter to pull the color away from the edges and fill in the image. In some cases, I went back over an area with the marker to deepen the color, but I love how fast and easy it is to get a watercolored look by using these two tools. I'm certainly no Picasso, yet I get consistently good results with this method.

Most of the rest of the card is a CASE, but I wanted to use the percolator since the message evokes the image. So I added it to the cardboard layer. The idea for the hearts came from the original percolator image, but I wanted them to be bigger, so they were punched in Poppy Parade using the Heart-To-Heart Punch. The 2" Scallop Circle Punch and the 1 3/8" Circle Punch were used to create the pieces that have the mug on them. I adhered 5/8" Early Espresso grosgrain ribbon to the cardboard, then tied Crumb Cake 3/8" taffeta ribbon and Hemp Twine around it to cinch it a bit. The base is Always Artichoke, a 7" x 6.5" scored at 3.5".