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by paperfacets

Themed Collage in Card making

Most, if not all, of the greeting cards sold in stores today have one thing in common – they have a single theme or design.  Now, that can be tough especially when the recipient is just too hard to describe with a one-design-card.  Perhaps that person is best represented by a combination of several symbolic items.

If you were to give a multi-faceted person a greeting card one day, why not consider creating a themed collage card – wherein every little thing that best describes that person is there.  In themed collage cardmaking, you don’t have to limit yourself to what’s available.

The first thing you need to consider is the personality of the person.  This can be quite easy if you know the person full well.  However, you can go out of your way to do some bit of research if you lack the facts.  After determining the inclinations and aspirations of the person, you can then conceptualize the theme of your collage cardmaking project.

Next, gather as many old magazines and photos as you can.  See which ones have images, texts, or designs that best describes the person in any way.  Cut those out jaggedly or neatly – you decide.  You can even artistically tear them out with your fingers, but be careful so you won’t destroy the image!

Lay out all the cutouts and see if they’re enough to fully describe the person.  If the person loves food, music, the beach and shopping, then try as much as possible to cutout representative images or texts of each point of interest.   At best, try to select images with colors that complement each other.  You can go for reds, blacks and whites, full color, sepia, grayscale, or whatever color combination you want.

Moving on to card making, arrange the cutouts on a blank card.  Decide where you want them pasted and how you want them to overlap each other.  Once you’ve picked the final arrangement, paste or glue them on the card one by one.  Apply glue liberally so that it won’t warp the card or the cutouts.  Smooth the collage to get rid of bumps and bubbles.  Let it dry.

Now you have a themed collage card that’s perfect for your multi-faceted friend.  It could be your mom who takes care of a lot of things including the kids, your dad, her job, and the family pet.  It could be your sporty girlfriend who is equally adept at the court and in the kitchen.  This themed collage cardmaking project is intended to let you create something that truly describes that one special person in your life – a unique and symbolic personalized card.

When making a birthday card, decorate the card with stamping techniques and circle cutters. Learn about using two-way glue when making birthday cards at home with help from a demonstrator for a craft company in this free video on birthday cards. Expert: Brandi Mackenzie Contact: www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/brandimackenz Bio: Brandi Mackenzie is a demonstrator for Stampin’ Up, a leading craft company with offices worldwide. Mackenzie gives seminars and classes on rubber stamping and card making. Filmmaker: Mike Phillips
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Tags: Card, Collage, Making, Themed
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by lisabatty

So What Really is a Handmade Card?

What exactly is a handmade card? If you buy one what are you looking for? If you make one, how much help do you want? Do you go it alone, or dive into a mix of pre-formed shapes? The Handmade card category is big business “” in both the Craft arena and Greeting Cards and so it covers a variety of card combinations:

1. any hand made -or rather ‘home made’ cards

2. hand-embellished but pre-packaged

3. a card kit that you ‘hand-assembled’ at home.

The breadth of the category makes it more challenging for card retailers to classify for sale stock, but easier for the crafter to pass something essentially shop bought as handmade.

Let’s look at them more fully.

1. The handmade/home-made card

This one gets my thumbs up or rather a thumbs on! Homemade doesn’t mean cheap and tacky. With some excellent courses, books and tutorials out there, there’s no excuse for half-hearted efforts.

This category applies to any hand-made card made from scratch using your own ingenuity, creativity and resourcefulness. It certainly requires the most inventiveness and the likelihood is that a handmade card – made from either casual or carefully selected materials will be truly individual.

Such handmade cards are made with considerable love and attention and usually treasured by the lucky recipient.

2. The hand-embellished card

Interestingly the greeting card industry considers handmade to cover any ‘hand-assisted’ card, often with ‘proud’ features. That includes (but is not limited to) sequins, felt, glitter, ribbon, beads etc. Think base design, on a quality card stock. This background is then topped with a selection of hand-embellishments: anything from tinted photos to faceted beads.

Many publishers use emotive vocabulary such as ‘embossed, sophisticated and elegant’ – to attract customers to purchase what they (both public and customer) consider one step above the mass market crowd.

3. The card kit

Card kits are increasingly popular with all age groups. You know the thing – a complete set of blank cards and envelopes, with inclusive, inviting little thingummies that you hand assemble to create new. You might get some templates as to layout, or be inventive in laying out your surface additions. Card kits include all the embellishments and card blanks you need to create your own handmade card. Detailed instruction may, or may not be included.

There are a number of advantages to card kits: a. everything (and sometimes this means glue too) is included, ready-to-go b. placement and assembly is directed by the materials. instructions come as standard – so no need to be inventive in your use of the materials – unless you want to.

On the other hand, whilst card kits don’t give you too much freedom of choice they can give you a way into testing your creativity. With a great range of kits to choose from it shouldn’t take long to find the right kind for you. A number of sites and stations have tantalising packages to buy and the immediacy of them makes card making fun.

There’s no reason to lessen your sense of achievement in using card kits and they are often one move up from the hand embellished card, and a pre-cursor to going it alone – in free thinking creativity.

Whatever you opt for, making or giving a handmade card shows your willingness to go the extra mile for something extra special. How much or how little you do, depends on the type of card you buy and how handmade you want your handmade card to be.

Perhaps it comes down to semantics. I often used to equate handmade with homemade which meant (to me) a cheap version of shop bought. What I didn’t know then was that handmade really gives you a chance to shine in your particular avenue of creativity. And if you are an aspiring free thinker then the card kit will naturally impose just one too many restrictions on your ability to go with the flow. If however it allows you, with good conscience to say ‘handmade’ with pride then it has great appeal.

The craft market is in boom time right now and card making is enjoying a high too. Hence the number of card making magazines available marrying these two great trends perfectly.

So handmade need not mean a ‘less than’ card. It certainly shouldn’t. Personally I’d favor handmade over bought. Where you step into the realms of making or buying a handmade card lies in your needs, abilities and pocket.

Choose what’s right for you and give or make a handmade card with pride. It will always single your card giving out from the crowd and say much about how you see the act of giving as well as the art of making.

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Tags: Card, Handmade, Really
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Essential Techniques For Card Making

If you are a beginner in card making it is best to study the basic techniques applied in making card. All techniques available will give you a unique and elegant finish to your invitation or greeting cards. Browse for online techniques and you will see the techniques below that are used regularly in the card projects by seasoned and beginner card makers. They’re all techniques, easy to master and wonderful for creating dozens of cards.

Water paints – Water paints creates a lovely effect for backgrounds on cards. It has this amazing look effect of drawings reflected by the water paints.

Calligraphy – Using different types of fonts for alphabets and numbers adds a very artistic flair to card making.

Rubber Stamping – Rubber stamps can be purchased, including different colored inks to create patterns, shapes and pictures onto your cards.

Embossing – Is used with metal templates to create a raised effect on the piece of metal. This can be done using stamps, patterns and shapes that are “embossed” into the metal to create these effects.

Quilling – Quilling involves rolling several layers of thin paper to create a great effects on your cards. The paper is wound around a quill to create a basic coil shape. The paper is glued at the tip and the coil shaped, these shaped coils are arranged to form flowers, leaves, and various ornamental patterns.

Punching – Using different sizes and designs of hole punch, you can create a few great textured holes that can be embellishments on your card making craft.

Iris Folding – Very similar to quilling as it involves layering different colored strips of paper to create spiral effects in your crafts.

Decoupage – includes using colored and printed paper that is glued to create effects. You could also use gold leafing techniques that come under the heading of decoupage. Decoupage is actually very simple. If you know how to cut and paste, you already have the basic techniques involved in decoupage. Basically, you cut out pictures; you glue the pictures onto an object like a card; and then cover the object and pictures with a few coats of glue/decoupage medium to protect it.

The techniques above are very simple to learn yet very effective when used in card making. You can purchase a great guidebook that will enable you to check over how each technique is executed. It will also give you easy instructions and inspiration for your imagination.

Tags: Card, Essential, Making, Techniques
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by brungrrl

Where to find card making ideas

When people find out I make cards they often comment that they couldn’t do that. They automatically assume every card I create is something I came up with but the truth of the matter is anyone can make cards and you don’t have to come up with the ideas yourself. The world is full of ideas and inspiration and lots of them for little or no cost. So where do I find ideas and inspiration?

I can remember when I first learned about rubber stamping and card making. I got some supplies and went to a gathering with a few friends who also enjoyed paper crafting. I sat down at the table with everyone, pulled out my supplies and then had no idea what to do next. I didn’t know what to make. I sat there thinking and thinking, getting more frustrated by the minute. Then I was let in on a little secret. Most card makers don’t just sit down and create cards from scratch. They begin with an inspiration piece. Quite often a card someone else made.

Online

Since you are probably online reading this article let’s start here. The online world is full of ideas for card makers. There are entire sites dedicated to galleries of card samples. Many card makers now write blogs as a place to share their creations. The companies that make and sell card making supplies often have galleries dedicated to cards made with their products. Many of the card making and paper crafting magazines also have online content. Some is what you would find in their regular paper publication while more often there are ideas and examples they couldn’t fit in the printed version. This leads me to the next place to find ideas.

Magazines

There are dozens of magazines currently in print dedicated solely to card making, paper crafting or paper arts. Check your local book store, craft & hobby store, or big box departments store and you’re sure to find plenty.

Stores

Many local paper crafting, card making, stamping or scrapbooking stores have projects on display that change with the season or when new products are released. You can even take your camera or camera phone into the store and snap a photo of any projects you like to refer to later when you sit down to create.

Think Outside the Box

While this idea may not appeal to beginners many experienced card makers look to nontraditional places for ideas and inspiration. Our world today is more saturated with advertisements and color than ever before. Look through any magazine at the ads, the layouts, the fonts and color combinations. See what colors and color combinations are popping up in local stores. What trends are hot in home fashions and interior decorating? Ideas and inspiration are everywhere. You could even be inspired by the front of a box of cereal. Just keep your eyes open and pay attention.

What’s most important to remember is that you don’t have to pull ideas from thin air. There are plenty of places to look for inspiration. Start with something and once you get going the ideas will flow. You’ll find yourself making small changes to the idea you began with and soon the creation will be your own. Now find an inspiration piece and get started.

Mini haul of Sizzix dies and a set of rubber stamps. I didn’t even know they sold rubber stamps. Great deals on the sizzix.com site. Shipping cost half as much as my total product. Saved over off original price of everything. Saving the rest of my scrapping pennies for CHA in Anaheim this weekend. Thanks for watching.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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Tags: Card, find, Ideas, Making
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by Anastacia Haddon

Card Making in Less than Five Minutes

When it comes to cards, there are plenty of patterns you can choose from.  Card making has never been easier because the Internet is full of ideas on what you can do in your next card project.  All throughout the year, you might be sending out Christmas cards more than birthday or thank-you cards.  That is why it is important to think of ways to save on Christmas cards.  There are a lot of simple and easy to follow instructions.  You just need to search for them on the Internet, print them out and you’re all set to start your first card making project.

The easiest would be scribbling an image on the cover.  You can use sparkly paint or glossy markers.  Look for a nice card stock.  For DIY cards, card stocks with unique edges are perfect and would be suitable for any kind of design.  Look for sparkly fabric paint.  Gold or silver would be perfect for Christmas designs.  Take the pen and scribble a tree at the center of the card.  Then put star stickers at the end of each row.   You can also add a sticker that says a holiday greeting at the bottom of the tree.  In just a few minutes, you have just completed your Christmas card.

Collages also look good on cards.  You can use printouts or different textured paper for your images and then stickers for the caption.  In the scrapbooking aisle, you will often find stickers on sale.  You can cut the pieces that you don’t need and just use the parts that you want.  A good example of a collage is a Christmas card with cut-out trees. Use a corrugated paper for the tree.  Make a pattern of triangular shapes.  You can also cut them in graduating sizes then cut the corrugated paper along the edges of the pattern.

Card making can be easy and fun.  All you need are the essentials and a few embellishments.  Even a simple sparkly marker could do the trick.  Look at patterns than scribble the design using a marker.  You can also add stickers to complete the look.  Stars and other holiday images would be perfect.  Collages would also be a great card making project.  You can glue different images using different textured paper.  For Christmas trees, corrugated paper would be the most suitable material.  There is a variety of easy to follow instructions.  All you need is some research and a few supplies.

Tags: Card, Five, Less, Making, Minutes, than
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