Things Are Out of Order: Valentine’s Cards

I know I said there would be Erasmus. I hear the Great Lamentations in the street when I say, “There shall be no Erasmus this week.” I offer my sympathy.

But Friday is Valentine’s Day! And posting a how-to on Valentine’s cards would be Fairly Useless next week. And I So Love Holidays.

So: today, Valentine’s Cards. Next week: Erasmus.

I have to admit, part of me is worried about the limited usefulness of a post on how to make cards. Essentially, this comes down to “Glue Things on Other Things.” But, people often comment on crafts in real life in the “I wish I could do x” vein – and they can! They just don’t know it yet. If you are one of those people, here’s what you need to do:

1. Gather your supplies. You need blank cards, really, to make the final product look nice – bulk packages are Very Cheap, and then you’ll have envelopes already there and cut to fit. You’ll also want a selection of coordinating solid color and patterned craft papers. Double-sided are particularly nice, both because they tend to be coordinated by default and because they immediately give you more options. This year, I also used washi tape, because Amazing. In the past, I have often used either sticky-backed ribbon or normal ribbon – I also have a little sticker making machine that was fairly cheap and is one of my favorite craft items. I, myself, don’t go in much for sheet stickers, generally – I have a hard time using them in a way that doesn’t feel tacky, even if only to me. This may be because my usual reaction to Glitz is “Keep Adding More.” If you are more Trustworthy and Restrained, stickers may be right up your alley.
   

   These were My Supplies. While I feel like the papers all coordinate to some degree, I did definitely have certain colors in mind for a “pink” set and certain others in mind for a “vintage” set. The selection as pictured here veers a bit towards the vintage, because the pink were double-sided. Also: Washi Tape.

2. Once you’ve got your materials together, you should spend some time thinking about some final products you want – whether Very Detailed or just “I want this color with that color.” You probably have a list of the people you’re making for – jot notes next to each to guide you along. I’m not including a picture of my list, because I’m already Sad that some people will be seeing their cards ahead of time; I’m certainly not going to tell them which card is theirs.
3. Most of the time, you’ll want to use a solid piece of craft paper for the background of the outside of the card. Whether the background covers the front and back or only the front is Entirely Up to You. I tend to do a bit of both, depending on the final product I have in mind. A Cricut is great for these; I can’t cut a straight line to save my life, so for me it’s actually pretty indispensable. Thoroughly glue the paper to the card, concentrating on getting the edges sealed down.
   

   The examples I’ll be using for most of my construction pictures are of my nieces’ cards, since they are Not Likely to be reading this. For all three of these cards, I just cut out a piece to fit the front part of the outside of the card.

4. Next, work on other background elements or trim. If you’re using washi tape, you might use some to seal the edges of parts of the card or to delineate particular spaces. You might also add another background piece – like a stripe or a rectangular “frame” – at this point. Having some sort of Extra Element, rather than just a background and then a heart or message, will usually make for a more finished looking card. For the best results, just cut any paper elements for now and coordinate them on the card as you’d like to see them. Don’t glue yet!
   

   You can see where I used the washi tape as a more decorative element on the card to the left. On the card to the right, the washi tape is just sealing the bottom edge. There will be a rectangular element on the glitter-y card, but it could not be photographed on the cards standing upright, because it hasn’t been glued to the card yet – pay attention!

5. Most cards need some kind of Anchoring Element on the front. Because these cards are for Valentine’s Day, it’s hard to go wrong with a basic heart shape. “Love” and “XO” lettered out also work nicely. In past years, I’ve sometimes used papers that had nice shapes just waiting to be cut out and made into that Main Element – love birds, cupids, etc. If you have a paper like that, remember to leave a slight edge all around your shape, which will look Much Nicer than if you try to cut right along the lines. Put these shapes together with your other elements. Push things around until the card is Just Right, then glue. Again, concentrate on edges. One advantage of a glue stick: you can set it upright and rub smaller shapes across the top of it, making sure you get their little spaces.
   

   Some really simple shapes sealed with washi tape were the base for the back left and front center cards; then just some hearts and lettering to anchor the designs.

6. Make sure to write A Little Something in each card! I am not a Great Writer in Cards; I hope that the work I put into the cards speaks a bit for me, instead. A simple “Happy Valentine’s Day” will do just fine. I am not showing pictures of this, either, for the same reasons as above.

See?! Easy Peasy! You can do that. And here are a few other designs for inspiration:

The entire front of this card is washi tape stripes. Just go slowly and you won’t have any trouble lining them up. The “love” element is cut out from decorative paper. I wrote it out in cursive in dark, soft pencil on a sheet of notebook paper, sketched that out into bubbly letters, then pressed that facedown on the back of the decorative paper and firmly traced back over the lettering. The pencil will transfer and show you where to cut.

Very Simple: Four layers of background in decreasing widths. Seal with washi tape along the bottom edge. Heart cut out. Love.

And finally, here are the twelve I did this year all together:

Give yourself some basic patterns and templates to work from and those coordinating papers, and you should be able to create several cards you like, in a Reasonable Amount of Time, without feeling like an Assembly Line.

Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

How To: Ship Decorated Cookies, Safely

You see, friends, I am trying to alternate between recipes, Early Modern trivia, and domestics. We shall see how it goes.

So, today: shipping cookies safely. I poked around a bit, in December, when I decided to send cookies as holiday gifts to some friends who are far afield, but I wasn’t totally satisfied with any of the sites I found. Most seemed either Too Fussy (bubble-wrapping each, packing peanuts, the Whole Nine Yards) or clearly didn’t have decorated cookies in mind at all. I liked the idea, though, because it’s a reasonably budget friendly, easily organized present for several people that still has room to be tailored for each person or each couple.

And why am I posting this now, you ask? After all, we’re months away from the next Holiday Sweets Attack.

Incorrect. February 14th approacheth, and everyone knows that it’s not just for couple-y types. I can’t say I’ll be repeating this baking and shipping plan for this particular Valentine’s, but I’ll be keeping it in mind when I myself become the Friend Who Is Far Afield.

So, steps 1 through 6: Prepare, refrigerate, cut, bake, cool, and decorate the cookies.

I’m afraid I can’t say too much about steps 1, 2, or 4, because the recipes I used are not my own. My sugar cookie recipe is near to Mark Bitman’s “Refrigerator (Rolled) Cookies” in How to Cook Everything, just with a smidgen less sugar and more vanilla. Ah, and cream instead of milk. I also usually use part Irish butter instead of normal unsalted for, oh, about a a quarter of the total butter in anything I want to be Extra Nice, like holiday presents. Cut back on the salt, a bit, accordingly.

My gingerbread recipe, then, is modified from the “Soft Glazed Gingerbread” in Tartine. The biggest modification is that I don’t glaze the cookies or use a patterned pin or plaque – I’m just using the dough to make rolled cookies. I also, though, cut back on the cocoa powder a bit and use maple syrup instead of corn syrup – a good substitution for gingerbread generally, I think.  Tartine also asks you to refrigerate overnight; I usually refrigerate my cookie dough for about four hours before rolling.

This is my only advice on Step 3: My grandmother told my mother, who told me, that you should always push as many cutters down into the dough as you possibly can before moving any of them; that way you use as much as you can each time and aren’t overworking the dough by constantly re-rolling.

As for step 5, well – I’m not likely to be a Sunday Sweet in my lifetime. But, if you’re not used to decorating at all, I perhaps have one or two useful ideas. First: assemble your decorating tools. Better decorators than I have those Fancy Icing and Piping Tools. I have Store Bought Cookie Icing.

Someday, I will test enough homemade icings to discover one that comfortably ships and makes nice neat lines. I will buy a fancy decorating tool, and my cookies will be as Completely Natural as cookies can be and Magnificent.
Until then, these cookie icings set up nicely and aren’t distracting in taste.

I suggest getting a palette of three to four colors, with coordinating sprinkles and fancies. I especially like the little sugar pearls – they add nice dimension, and for Christmas cookies they make great ornaments or gingerbread-man eyes.

I decorate in batches of shapes, so that I get used to the corners and turns and lines and such. If you’ve got them all laid out in front of you in rows or somesuch, remember to work away from your starting point – I’m a righty, so that’s moving down and to the right for me.

Here are some of the stars, out of the stars, gingerbread people, stockings, and trees that I did up this year. I actually prefer cookies without icing (actually, come down to it, I actually prefer bacon and cheese), but they are Not Festive. These cookies are Festive.

Ok, now to the more important steps: how to actually go about wrapping these up, getting them in the mail, and getting them safely to their destinations.

To accomplish this, you need:

• parchment or wax paper,
• tissue paper,
• festive fabric cut into patches about 7 x 11 (or thereabouts),
• aluminum foil,
• baggies – I used the little portioning bags that go inside bigger freezer bags. Sandwich bags would also work fine,
• and boxes. The boxes need to be bigger than you think, but not terribly big. I used USPS small flat rate boxes (dimensions 8 11/16″ x 5 7/16″ x 1 3/4″, according to the post office, and aren’t those just ridiculous dimensions?) to send out half-dozens.

First, prep your wrapping for each package. Your aluminum foil should be in great sheets a little over twice the size of your boxes, then doubled over – or two sheets that are each a little over the size of the box. The tissue paper can be folded into quarters or halves, depending on the size of the sheets.  It should be small enough to have an edge of foil all around.  You want a double layer of aluminum foil, the tissue paper, and then the festive fabric, laid out on top of each other.

See, like this! There along the upper edge you can see curls of the parchment and wax paper I used to wrap the cookies.

Next, get your wax paper or parchment paper. I actually used a bit of both. Cut it off into strips that are wide enough to wrap up your cookies at least once around. Mine didn’t fold over beyond that, because they were going to have plenty of other layers.

Wrap each cookie, individually, in a strip of the wax paper. Stack them together in twos, threes, or fours, depending on the size of the shipment altogether, and then wrap those stacks in the baggie – close, but not tight.

To the left is a stack of three cookies wrapped in the wax paper. To the right is the other stack of three for this packaged, which have been wrapped up in the baggie already.
Basically, you’re trying, first, to make sure that the icing of each cookie doesn’t rub up against the others and, second, to get the cookies in fairly stable stacks so that they lend each other stability.

From here, you just need to get each of those three layers of further wrapping tucked up around the cookies, like so:

One: fold the Festive Fabric over.

Two: fold the tissue paper over, and do your best to seal it with a bit of a crease. It won’t hold very well; it doesn’t need to.

Three: fold the aluminum foil over and seal with folds on all three open sides. Yes, mine is already sitting in the box, but I promise you can easily move this little Package of Cookie into a box from wherever you are working.

Tada! Your cookies are ready to go in their shipping boxes, and each is carefully protected from this dire mailing process by five layers. The last, but still important thing, is to check that you’ve gotten your dimensions right for the package and the box. If there’s much space, make sure to fill it with something or your cookies will be rattled to bits. If there’s no space at all and it seems like a bit of a squeeze, Stop Immediately, or you will crush your cookies before they ever get beyond the garden gate.

Like so, you see? So is good.

I went with the USPS FlatRate because they ran about five or six dollars to ship, and they were supposed to get there within two days – good time, for a cookie (mind, they didn’t, in every case, but they were meant to). You can also set the options so that the mail-people are supposed to leave the packages there, because everyone hates running around after packages (mind, they didn’t, in every case, but they were meant to).

So far as I know, no cookies were broken, and I was able to send a real present to several far away friends without spending fifty dollars on a fruit basket.

A Little Craft: Baby’s Birthday Banner

Banners: probably not the most revolutionary craft. But I’m practically addicted. And in the grand tradition of the huswife book, originality is hardly key. Indeed, the most appropriate thing I could do is exactly this: present my own version of the exact same a thousand other people are already doing. Now if I only could have a man write this post for me, while he pretends that he invented the concept – then this would really be a modern book of huswifery.

But since that’s not an option, I’m just going to share this fun craft from a couple of months ago, requested by a friend who was making a beautiful cake for another friend’s baby’s first birthday. She wanted a tiiiiiny banner. And man, do I love a banner.

1. For any banner, you want strips of paper cut into rectangles cut roughly 2:1 length to width. First, I chose eight coordinated papers – one for each letter of the birthday girl’s name, plus one for each end. For these itsy-bitsies, I cut my strips of paper 1.5 in x 3/4 in.

2. Next, fold your papers in half – what my elementary teachers would have called hamburger style. Now, you have tiny 3/4 x 3/4 inch squares.

3. For your last cutting step, put a dot in the exact middle of the open edge of your square. Then cut from both corners of the folded side down to that dot. Now you should have tiny triangles – the closed side should be 3/4 inch long, then come down to a centered point that’s open.

This is what your pennants will look like once they’re cut. After cutting the pennants, I decided on an order. Also, there’s a crumb in the photo. I don’t know what it is.

4. Next, because this was for a birthday banner, I needed to get the birthday girl’s name printed across these tiny pennants. I can see the appeal of using printables for this sort of thing, but I instead decided to pen and ink it. I found a font style I liked and used their sample for a model. First, I sketched the letters down in pencil. Then, I used a scrapbooking pen to trace the outline and fill in where necessary. I don’t imagine a scrapbooking pen is precisely necessary, but I do recommend making sure it’s a high quality, smoothly flowing pen – unless the scratchy lines are an aesthetic you’re going for. You definitely want to do any writing before you string your pennant, in case something goes awry.

I picked a font based on old calligraphy styles, because the cake was quite posh – I wanted to go crafty, but not too cutesy. Also, yeah, the crumb is still there.

5. Now, you’re ready to string! I used embroidery thread because it was a good thickness for a tiny banner, and I had lots of lovely colors on hand to choose from. I tend to knot on either side of each pennant. So, first, tie a knot. Next, apply glue all over one half of the inside of the pennant – be careful to get it all the way down to the tip and not to clump too much up near the top. I used a gluestick – they’re simple and fairly clean. Seal the pennant together over the string, near to the knot. And finally, tie another knot – and repeat for the next pennant strip.

6. If you’re using the mini-banner for a cake, you’ll need some way to suspend your banner. To do this, I fixed the banner to two kebob sticks – I had originally planned on using chopsticks, but the kebob sticks were longer and I thought the point might make it easier to get the banner set up in the cake.

Here’s the banner, all assembled. I left a little more room on the ends so that I could wind or unwind the ends of the string from around the sticks as necessary to raise or lower the banner.

Now, the banner was all done! Off to the party, where Chef Friend affixed it to her amazing cake:

Here’s the banner in context! Isn’t that cake amazing? Buttercream roses with the most beautiful shading – my baking friend is truly very talented.

I can hardly take credit for the most breathtaking part of this photo, but the cake also highlights when a banner is particularly useful – candles would have wrecked that gorgeous frosting work. Fifteen minutes  or so of work for a slightly more personalized candle alternative.