anniversary card with nepalese paper

So, after declaring that crafting is going to take a backseat to all of the other activities I'm juggling lately, I went and made a card. Typical.

In my defense, it's for a specific occasion (a friend's anniversary). I missed sending out Christmas cards this year, so I feel like I have to make up for it with something extra-special.


Apparently, "extra-special" means handmade Nepalese papers. (Well, mostly. The blue-and-white one in the corner is a Japanese katazome, but I didn't use it.) These are my favourite papers, which is why I have them in rolls and not just small sheets.


I love the texture of these papers — it's almost like velvet. And yet, like all handmade papers, it's significantly more raw and fibrous than our everyday, over-processed papers. Every piece has some "imperfection" in it — a thick part, or a creased vein. And the edges are fantastic. I tried to preserve that, on the card.


Having said all that, I don't know if I actually like this card very much. There are too many problems with it. 1) It's not terribly flat. (It's in its pressing stage right now; we'll see how that works out.) 2) Because of the narrowness of the closure, it's nearly impossible to close the stupid thing once you've opened it. I haven't even glued it down yet and I already have problems closing it. I suppose I could just assume that no one will want to close it back up once it's been opened, but that seems like cheating.

Oh, and 3) It's kind of really, really boring. I'm not sure if even calligraphy will rescue this one.