July 2010 - Page 2 of 2 - Paper Source Blog

What’s more fun then an energetic group of kids (girls ages 4-10 and one brave 8 year old boy) and a bunch of cool papers, shape cards, glitter glue, ribbon and shiny gems? On a rainy Saturday morning, nothing!

In order to learn more about what kids love to work with when crafting, we hosted a “test market” crafting session at our Evanston store several weeks ago. We hoped to find out what excited the kids and see how they would react to the craft projects we had for them. We also hoped to learn how age affected what they most enjoyed. One thing that clearly stood out in our test group was that young girls loved embellishing their art with adhesive rhinestones and pearls. They put them on everything, and lots of them!

Inspiration comes from anywhere and anything, and in the case of this Valentine’s Day card it came from Fabra’s adorable Boston Terrier, Archie! As the intern here at Paper Source, I’ve gotten the chance to observe the unexpectedly extensive process that one simple greeting card design goes through, before winding up at our stores ready to be sold.

The first step after an idea is conceived is its design. Elements such as print method, fonts, color, size, imagery, and copy all must be taken into account. For this card, one of our graphic designers, Elaine, used an existing image of a Boston Terrier as inspiration for her hand-drawn computer image. She made sure that the dog had the right angle and facial expression in order to create a strong composition with lots of character. Once the design is created, it goes through an approval process. Often there are color, composition or sentiment tweaks that must be made in order to prefect the card.

Perfecting kids crafts by learning from the experts

From house pet to holiday card