In the name of the moon, Merry Christmas

Holiday commission season has officially started!  And since a lot of what I'm working on is probably going to be for other people, consider Jupiter Star Power! on weekly posting.

Someone who favorited my Outer Senshi notecards asked about a Sailor Moon Christmas card.  Since nobody would want these if I was drawing them myself, that limited my options.  Solution: similar picture on either pastel Christmas colors or light blue with snowflakes.

 Fortunately I started trying to figure out a Glaceon card before I forgot how to enjoy things (don't ask--grad school and mental illness don't mix), so I already had two possible mock-ups.

The stamp was bought...a shameful amount of time ago for a project I totally forgot about until I decided to explain why I had a snowflake stamp.  Apparently you can do things with glitter and fancy inks, but I feel like that's not a good life choice since I'm already going to end up on Hoarders: Michaels Edition.

If some of the snowflakes appear lighter than the others, that's not photographic trickery.  It's also totally a deliberate effect and not because I forgot that stamps could be so damn complicated.

Here's what the final turned out to be.  I did think about using pink to match the outline around Sailor Moon, but it didn't say Christmas so much as "pre-infallible gender screening baby shower."  And now it's sort of wintery/Christmasy while still keeping Sailor Moon's colors.  That was also totally deliberate.

Since I knew the stripe would be slightly smaller than the snowflakes, I decided to turn the stamp rather than trying to line them up.

I also finally got around to adding an Inner Senshi stationery set to the gift shop.  I really like the way these turned out, although some of the cutting was a complete pain in the ass.  Especially since I lost my embroidery scissors (again, possibly for real).

These are made by using a little craft punch on a strip of paper.  Sailor Moon's is made with two strips--the solid red one, then the blue cut-outs.








As I was cutting out hearts in the crude semblance of a line, I contemplated my homemade confetti.  Perhaps there was some clever way to re-use it, like by adding a small detail to the inside of the cards.

Oh, except I used the card color on the inside of all the other cards.  Which means wasting more paper--but look!  Extra details!

If you'd like to enter the fabulous world of cutting up paper, but don't want to spend ridiculous amounts of money to cut little shapes and stamp things, look for the craft store impulse buy bins.  You can find lots of little craft punches.  Are they as good as the ones those decoupage fat cats charge big money for?  Who cares?  It's a dollar, and it makes shapes in paper.

Next lesson: buying the cheapest Aida fabric with a coupon.