Posts tagged ‘cards’

For my grandpa’s birthday I whipped up a quickie card made mostly from recycled paper in this old song book.

I stamped “happy birthday” and used a circle punch to cut it out and a smaller circle punch with the treble clefs.  I glued these to a gray paper background to make a border.  The hat is folded from scrapbook paper…it’s just a mini version of the hats typically made from newspaper.  The background is a page from the song book.

Much of the time when I’m stamping I emboss my images.  Embossing makes the image stand out by raising it and making it shiny.  There are a few different approaches to embossing & some different products you can try (such as clear or colored powders and white or colored stamp pads, plus we’ll discuss whether to use pigment or dye based inks).  But the basic idea is you stamp your image on paper with ink, sprinkle embossing powder & remove the excess, then use a heat tool to melt the powder.  So here goes…

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For a friend’s bridal shower gift I’m making her a stack of thank you cards.  The best part is I managed to use entirely scrap paper except for one full sheet of the background paper on the far right card (I kept the label but can’t locate it in my pile of paper right now…will look later.)    I also used a thank you stamp, ink, clear embossing powder, zig-zag scissors, a sewing machine to stitch white thread around the perimeter, glue, tape runner, and my favorite paper rose (a trace & cut template called Fold-It Swirls.)

Occasionally I’ll use Shrink-Its to make greeting card embellishments.  You can also use them to make buttons, jewelry, and other creative plastic items.  They’re about $3-$4 for a pack of 6 sheets, which isn’t too much for how many items you can make.

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I’ve had a happy nostalgic time looking at my craft photo archives.  I remember all the fun projects & gifts I’ve made. I’m embarrassed to see items I proudly gave away as well!  It’s my artistic journey, and I’ve grown a lot over the years.

One of my favorite crafty things to do when I first graduated college was make greeting cards.  My budget was $0 for craft supplies, so I had to get innovative.  I used pressed leaves, construction paper, markers, a kids watercolor set, and sometimes one of the two rubber stamps I owned.  I learned everything I could from library books, but made do with do with what I had instead of buying the actual supplies.  Sometimes I felt like I’d never advance in my skills without all the “right” supplies, but in all actuality I was learning resourcefulness and still making progress in my creativity.

So, just for fun, here are some cards I made 7 years ago.

While my paper crafting supplies were strewn over the dining room table, I thought I’d make another greeting card.  I love the small canvas size of a card…it feels manageable and non-intimidating.  My inspiration today was the scrapbook paper you see on the left in the picture (by Basic Grey).  For the card, I drew the botanical images on cardstock scraps, cut them out, and glued them on a blank greeting card.

For this card I raided my scrap paper stash, grabbed my circle & flower punches, and sat at the sewing machine.  I cut a background paper for the size of my card and sewed the punches in lines across the paper.  To do this, I laid 3 punches on the paper at a time, sewed them in place and repeated to finish each row.  You could glue the papers first if you want them to stay perfectly in place as you sew.  When finished sewing, I trimmed the edges with scissors, then glued the paper to the blank greeting card.

paper & punches for card

I got inspiration for this card from the paper garland project at Design Sponge (written by guest blogger Lauren Normandin).   She makes paper garland on the sewing machine and uses it as a ribbon to decorate gift boxes.

I am lucky that I have daughters because there is always something cute to make for little girls. But Colleen only has a son, and my great friend Ellie has two sons, and I always want to make them cute things, too. I ended up making these cards for Ellie to use for her boys. It’s a set of six blank cards embellished with wall paper samples in a burlap looking print and cut outs from a 1960s copy of the Bear Cub Scouts Handbook.

I figured she can save these to give to her boys as birthday cards, or to send to relatives as “thank you”s from the boys. They would also make cute invitations to an outdoor birthday party or cook out. Hopefully I can get these in the mail to her in the next few days.

quilted cards by Dana at Made

Use up fabric scraps & make a cute greeting with this Quilted Notecards Tutorial from Dana at Made.  It’s a great beginner’s sewing project (crooked lines give it character!), and it could easily be hand-sewn if you don’t have a machine.

The one thing I tried differently than Dana’s tutorial is I used a spray adhesive to adhere the fabric to the paper before sewing.  This kept my fabric from bunching as I sewed.  I liked how this worked, but then I hated the adhesive smell afterwards, so for the second card I used scrapbooking taperunner instead.

Colleen's cards

Here are two cards I made, inspired by this tutorial.  The first is my practice rose from the  Sew a Rose out of Knit Tutorial at Sew Take a Hike.   For the second card, I sewed the fabric to the card, then sewed ribbon scraps to the fabric.    

My first instinct with junk mail is to toss it in the recycling bin.  But lucky for me I did a double take at this Aveeno flyer and made a greeting card from it.  

Instructions:  I cut out the plant from the flyer and applied Glossy Accents to make it shiny.  I put stickers on the brown paper (from the flyer) and cut them to size.  I also used a square brad, some ribbon, and plain blue/gray paper for the background and strategically placed all the elements to cover some writing from the flyer.