Cobweb Cards: Reflections
Reflection by Rebekah Stretch
My crafting encounter with cobweb cards was filled with whimsy and creative play. As I read through the tutorial’s materials list, I found my mind racing with possible designs, themes, and embellishments that I could use to make my cobweb cards meaningful and unique. I quickly realized I would need to make multiple cobweb cards to satisfy the many rabbit holes my inspirations were taking me down! Buttons, stickers, and patterned paper were just a few of the elements I chose to arrange and play with as I crafted my cobweb cards. The card that felt especially expressive and innovative, however, was inspired by the essential substance that has fuelled many of my creative endeavors: coffee. The idea for this cobweb card began taking shape when I was considering what kind of paper to use for the cobweb itself; I wanted something that was delicate yet wouldn’t break easily, much like a cobweb itself.
I immediately thought of a coffee filter, which was the first of many coffee-themed creative experiments I came up with as I crafted the card. I glued whole coffee beans and buttons to my base card, and strung a single coffee bean on the central string tucked within my cobweb.
The final, most intimate coffee reference I included were some hand-written song lyrics from a love song called “If You’re the Coffee I’m the Cream” written underneath the cobweb on my base card. They read, “if you’re the milk I’m the cookie, if you’re the coffee I’m the cream,” and I chose to gift this cobweb card to my coffee-loving best friend who adores the song I chose to reference.
The creative choices I used for this cobweb card caused me to think about how much material culture has changed since the Victorian era, when making and giving cobweb cards was common practice. Coffee was a novel, recently-popularized beverage in the 19th century, and I doubt Victorians would have even considered integrating coffee as either a theme or potential form of embellishment for any of their crafting practices. Yet, here I was, borrowing from a time-tested and well-loved Victorian craft and making it relevant to my own historical and social reality. What a poignant creative evolution!
A coffee filter, a handful of coffee beans, a mug, a pile of blue thread, a piece of paper, a pair of scissors, and a handful of blue buttons
A mug being traced onto a piece of paper
Rebekah’s completed cobweb card, made using a coffee filter (lying flat)
Rebekah’s completed cobweb card, made using a coffee filter (expanded fully, revealing the coffee bean suspended in the cage)
A circle traced on a piece of paper with beans and small blue buttons glued to the corners of the page. “If you’re the milk I’m the cookie, if you’re the coffee I’m the cream” is written inside the circle
Rebekah’s second cobweb card, featuring patterned blue paper for the cobweb and brass buttons affixed to the card’s corners
Rebekah’s second cobweb card, expanded slightly
Rebekah’s second cobweb card, expanded fully to reveal a small white charm suspended inside the cage
Reflection by Kiarra Burd
Ever since I learned about cobweb cards, I have found their extraordinary delicacy a marvel and hoped that I would at some point get the opportunity to create one. In a desperate ploy to shirk my other responsibilities, I perused the many scraps of paper that I keep for the purposes of letter-writing and stumbled upon a curious printed photo of an old mural that had once been painted on a wall outside of one of my city’s most renowned stationary stores. The image featured a tiger adorned in a fuchsia pantsuit and matching bowler bedecked with a pink rose. Immediately, I knew that this fascinating figure had to be the centerpiece for my cobweb card.
A paper circle featuring a tiger in a pink pantsuit and matching hat, pasted onto a piece of magenta construction paper
Following my discovery of this curious creature, I continued to sift through loose scraps until a photograph featured in the brochure of a local art gallery caught my eye. Its flamboyant pink background paired perfectly with the fancy tiger and I resolved to combine the two. At the expense of the possibility of emulating the subtle beauty of the extant Cobweb Card featured in Jane’s tutorial, I aimed for the chromatically kitsch—an out of character move for anyone who knows me and my strict allegiance to all-black clothing.
Kiarra’s completed cobweb card (lying flat)
After cutting out and pasting images and text to my base (with extra-strength liquid glue since I had, of course, forgotten to check if I had a glue stick), I grabbed a needle and some thread and set out to complete my cobweb card. I was pleased with how it had looked at this point, but I felt that my bombastic collage was missing something. Then I saw the glimmer of that strange silver piece of metal stamped with the image of Athena that comes in sewing kits (what’s that thing even for?) and understood at once that it would look perfect dangling in the middle of my Cobweb Card. At last, it was done!
Kiarra’s completed cobweb card (expanded to reveal the stamped metal charm inside the cage)
As with all of the Victorian crafts that I have engaged with thus far, I was met with an unexpectedly gleeful joy at the completion of my cobweb card. If you’re seeking a simple and creative way to incite child-like wonder, I can’t recommend this tutorial enough.
Reflection by Jacqueline Kublik
The cobweb card tutorial was a creative and educational experience that I enjoyed completing. I found that, because the cobweb card can be so personalized, learning how the Victorians initially used them was both helpful and fascinating. Being primarily given as a gift from an admirer in the Victorian era, I believe that the cobweb card epitomizes creative gift giving and truly allows a maker to put their own spin on it. As messages within cards are still commonly exchanged today, it was interesting to see how a cobweb card seemed to rely less on words, and more on visuals. Indeed, some Victorian makers, as seen in the attached image of the “Cobweb valentine” (Anonymous), used only a person’s image underneath the “cobweb” or “birdcage” when creating a card.
A pair of scissors, a pen, a glue stick, a mug, a spool of orange ribbon, a piece of tissue paper, and three sheets of construction paper (peach, white, and blue)
A peach-coloured paper circle
While I did not include a person’s image or write a message in my card, the format of the craft allowed me the creative license to create a scene of the sun within the clouds. The “cobweb” or “birdcage” element of such a card truly offers endless possibilities for adaptation.
A blue piece of construction paper with white tissue glued to it, like a sky with clouds
The peach circle glued to the centre of the the sky-themed base
Jaqueline’s completed cobweb card (lying flat)
Jaqueline’s completed cobweb card (expanded)
Reflection by Joe Diemer
I made this craft on one of the first days of reading break, and it was a wonderful way to pull my mind and body out of essay-writing mode. As I was crafting, I was struck by the amount of concentration that the card demanded of me: from lining up the layers of paper on the base, to placing the tiny gold star decorations, to cutting out the cobweb itself, this project required that I pay a lot of attention to the way that I was moving my hands and fingers relative to the materials. As someone who is not an experienced crafter, I was quite surprised by how challenging it was to manipulate the paper and scissors to move the way that I wanted them to move.
That said, I believe that the challenge of this craft is precisely what makes it so special. The process of folding and cutting the cobweb made me nostalgic for elementary-school Christmases when the teacher would allow us to spend the afternoon making paper snowflakes to hang from the ceiling of the classroom. I may be slightly better at using scissors now than I was then, but the effect remains the same: I am forced to slow down and think about the way that my body interacts with other objects in space. Particularly after spending a lot of time sitting at a computer and going through the automatic motions of typing out essays, these purposeful movements were refreshing for both my mind and my body.
This embodied joy and nostalgia is made even more special by the fact that the card is intended as a gift, and the energy funnelled into choosing decorations and creating the cobweb is thus concentrated on another person. Although I haven’t had the chance to give my card to someone else yet, I cannot wait to watch its eventual recipient pull on the string, reveal the cobweb, and, hopefully, feel for themselves all of the care that went into its creation.
A pair of scissors, some scrap paper, string, a handful of brown buttons, a handful of gold star-shaped glitter, a bottle of Mod Podge, a pencil, and a paintbrush
A bottle of Mod Podge being traced onto floral maroon paper
A circle drawn on floral maroon paper
A pair of scissors beside a cut out paper circle
A pair of scissors besider the paper folded into a cone shape. Small incisions have been made on alternate sides of the cone
A pair of scissors beside the unfolded circle, which now features a spiral cut pattern
Gold string threaded through the centre of the paper circle with a small brown button threaded through the end
Joe’s completed cobweb card, expanded to reveal the button dangling inside the paper cage
Joe’s completed cobweb card (laying flat)