One card design...Two orientations!

Tomorrow I will be teaching card-making to my friend Gloria's "teen mother" class. This is a special class of about 20-30 high-school age girls who are expecting or who have recently had a baby and are still working towards finishing high school and graduating with their diploma. Gloria is an excellent teacher! She invites a variety of guests to come in throughout the year to share skills she thinks will interest her girls. This is probably the 5th or 6th year-in-a-row now that I have prepared to teach these girls. Gloria continues to ask me and I really do enjoy and look forward to the opportunity to do this each year...just one way I get to do a little bit of community service and hopefully inspire these young girls to discover their creative side. Creativity and paper-crafting really has been such a big source of joy for me over the years and I sure do love sharing it with others even when I don't get paid to provide the class. 

This is the "thank you" card I've designed that I will be showing the girls how to make. Notice how I've used the same papers cut to the same size/shape for each card, but that I rotated the card and "flipped" the design to work whichever way I wanted the card base to be oriented. I like to tell the girls that this is "their" card so they get to choose how they want to assemble it. I'm providing two examples of ways I used the pre-cut pieces, then it is up to them to decide if they want to copy one of my designs, or use the same paper pieces to get creative and come up with their own design. It is always interesting to see who follows the instructions exactly and who enjoys changing it up to make it their own. I am always amazed at how naturally creative young people can be and know that they are sure to inspire me as much as I try to inspire them.

My standard-size cards (below) feature the Florentine papers

with Champagne, Cocoa, and Twilight inks.