Analog Made from Digital — A Simply Lovely Calling Card Step-by-Step Cricut Tutorial
An old idea. A new way to make it.
edited with the signature system
There's an old crank phone sitting in my studio.
I've had it for years. There, on a shelf, waiting for the camera to find her.
It amazes me, every time I actually think about ‘once upon a time’ phone calls.
You'd pick up the handset and crank that little handle to signal the operator. She'd answer, and you'd ask to be connected. And if you were on a party line, which many people were, you shared that line with your neighbours. Everyone had their own ring pattern. Two shorts and a long meant the call was for you. One long meant someone else. And yes, sometimes people listened in. That was just how it worked. (My Dad has some good party line stories to tell.)
Sidenote: I asked Perplexity to source me a few funny partyline stories…
Classic Party Line Antics
☐ The Telltale Clock: Eavesdropping neighbors often thought they were being incredibly stealthy by holding their hand over the mouthpiece, but they would forget about background noise. A classic anecdote involves two people chatting, hearing a distinct tick-tock in the background, and saying, ‘Is that a new clock, Margaret?’…
followed instantly by the panicked click of the neighbor hanging up.
☐ The Passive-Aggressive Sigh: If you needed to make a call but your neighbors were deep into a gossip session, you had to wait. When patience ran out, the standard protocol was to pick up the receiver every few minutes to let out a loud, exasperated sigh or aggressively slam the phone back down on the hook until they took the hint.
☐ The Unintentional Chime-In: Sometimes ‘the snoops’ just couldn't help themselves. People would get so invested in the conversation they were secretly listening to that they would accidentally react out loud with an ‘Oh, really?’. In one rural neighborhood, a woman got so fed up with an eavesdropper breathing on the line that she yelled, ‘I wish this ‘bleep, bleep’ would hang up!’ ….only for the eavesdropper to instantly yell back, Who are you calling a bleep, bleep?!’
☐ The Fire Siren Traffic Jam: In small towns, whenever the local fire siren went off, every single house on the party line would rush to pick up their phone to find out where the emergency was. The irony was that they would tie up the line so badly that the local fire dispatch couldn't actually call the volunteer firefighters to get them to the station.
Anyhow where was I? Right the old phone…
Imagine with me.
You run into an old friend… you haven't seen in years, maybe forever ago. You talk for a while and then you both agree, we must do lunch…coffee or tea.
And then…you swap phones, exchange numbers…
But what if instead, you reached into your bag and handed them a card.
this is a made-up phone number
Not a business card. Something simpler. Your name, your number - hand written… simple.
And so I did.
I started with a photo of the phone on my studio shelf. Used MVP Studio (launching soon) to pull a wabisabi line drawing from it. Then into Cricut Design Space, added my name, my number, and used the Cricut pen tool to hand write it all.
From analog to digital back to analog again.
Today’s tutorial walks through every step, from generating the line drawing to setting up your design and all the Cricut steps…
Step-by-Step Tutorial
Do you have a Cricut? I'd love to know what you enjoy making with yours. And if you're thinking about getting one, I'm happy to answer any questions.
What might you put on your calling card.
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Until next time… Happy beautiful new week.
xx Kim
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What if instead of swapping phones, you handed someone a calling card instead. Simple. Handmade-feeling. Yours. This tutorial shows you exactly how I made mine, from AI line drawing to Cricut-cut calling card.