In-VEST

Being in-VESTED in parenthood is a huge commitment. I wanted to card to thank the fathers in my life who have invested their time and energy into being awesome Dads!

This card is completely die cut with a computer-generated sentiment (my spouse’s wording). Divinity Designs by Kelley Holland has come out with a bundle including the shirt, tie and vest as well as the fishing and hunting die set. What makes this bundle unique is the papers. Trying to find papers that mimic the fabrics is difficult.

With the exception of the herringbone material all the printed papers used in this card came from the Menswear paper pack. (I tracked down a creative commons photo of the wool herringbone and printed it after adjusting the size of the image.)

While the basic shirt card could be created without the die, it does make the assembly process quicker and adds some embossing lines around the edges that make it a more finished card. I decided to use two vested images to make this Z-fold card. Which meant that I used only half of the shirt die to cut out the shirt fronts and half to cut out the sentiment and backing papers.

My base card was 11 inches x 5 inches folded at 4 inches and 8 inches. The sentiment page base card is only 3 wide, so the need of a backing cardstock as well as the sentiment page being cardstock was essential to maintain the weight needed to balance out the card. I rounded the top two corners of the base card so the rounded shoulders of the shirt didn’t have the corners showing.

(I’m working on a baseball uniform for my husband’s card as you can see in the photo above.)

When I cut my shirt fronts out, I had to cut off the collar strips and glue them to the folded shirt base because the paper is printed only on one side. The double layers added dimension to the collar. When I make this card again, I may do the doubling up of the buttons in two layers to add dimension as well.