Quick cards for the boys

I had to rustle up birthday cards for 2 11 years old boys and quickly! Not my favourite thing...

During my web travels I came across the concept of "Craft Dash" and decided it would be a good opportunity to try making a card under 10mns. After all, as my OH always says, there is no sense in spending a lot of time on kids's cards as they will spend even less time looking at it.

Not as easy as I thought... my first try was a complete failure as I took over 13mns to finish the card. 3mns doesn't sound much but it is already 30% more than the allotted time! Back to the drawing board then.
From the original idea I had to abandon the embossing, the die-cut for the star as it took me ages to align the stamp and die, what with being stressed by the ticking clock. Also I had to switch colours around as I had used the last blue card blank in an old pack (yeah!! using up old stash) and I abandoned the tag stamp too.

Setting up again :

I started with die-cutting the ticket, then stamped it and the sentiment in blue ink (roughly 3mns). Then stamped the star 3 times (only one inking and 2mns) and effectively the rest of the time was swallowed by the embellishment. 2mns to punch the holes out (wishing for one of these screw punches) and trim the top and bottom to fit my stamp. Putting the foam pads on the ticket,  threading the twine and sticking to the card took another 2 1/2 mns.

And the twine is crooked...  Total time 9mns 47.

What I learned from the exercise:

- planning the card in advance and preparing all the supplies in one go before starting cuts down the realisation time. OK obvious...
- but to do that, and to iron out any unexpected issue, I had to walk through all the steps, for instance I had to try which inkpad was going to work (turned out I had to use a dye ink and a crafter's ink on top).

I am entering this card in the following challenges:
- Lisa.B.Designs challenge - Blue, Red and White
- Pretty Pink Posh Craft Dash #21 - Stars

Thanks for coming by,