Using paper pricking on a handmade sympathy card

A handmade sympathy card is a very personal way to express your love and support to someone at a difficult time. You’ll want to choose your materials and paper with care and to make sure that your message says the right thing, particularly as a sympathy card reaches someone at a ‘raw’ time in their lives. Two excellent suppliers of art materials and paper products are Dick Blick and Paper.com.

Paper pricking is a delicate yet effective touchy-feely technique to use in conjunction with other materials.
When looking around the card making forums I came across Magmaker forum – offered by Making Cards Magazine. Someone was looking for ideas on a Sympathy card and a forum user, Maureen, showed a recent card she’d made.

It’s a great example of an ‘empathetic’ sympathy card. The color is muted and gentle – nothing too harsh and used to great effect as a subtle background to the surface decoration.

She used a mix of techniques – and materials to give life and interest to her card. The pricking in the right and left-hand corner is really easy to do.

1. Trace off a pattern or mark out the side of area you want to prick onto tracing paper
2. Pencil in your pricking pattern, keeping the pencil dots evenly spaced.
3. Carefully insert a needle into a cork, making sure the shaft is held well in place. Choose a needle that will give you the size of hole you want. A rounded, blunt tip may give you the finish you are after. Play around with a few options before you work on your card, for real.
4. Before you start to prick, think your pricking through.
5. If you want your pricking to be proud – that’s raised on the front, then you’ll need to do the pricking on the wrong side. Conversely – if you want it flat do it on the right side.
6. So when Maureen did her card she opened out her pre-cut card and placed it right side down onto a polystyrene block, fixing the pricking pattern onto the ‘wrong side’ of the top left hand corner with masking tape. Once this was done she pricked the lower part of the card, putting the pattern up against the center fold.
7. The pricking should always be done neatly and carefully, using and storing your pricking needles following common sense health and safety guidelines.

Once done the card was set off with peel offs and flower stickers. All in all it created a sensitive, thoughtful card that was lovingly made.

If Paper Pricking appeals to you there are a great many paper pricking pattern books and ideas available.

Combining paper pricking with a handmade sympathy card will always be gratefully received.

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Written by Geraldine Jozefiak
Craft Expert and Demonstrator

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