Another Card Making Tutorial

While I have been resting, I've been making cards. 125 cards actually. Truly, I just love giving little cards for no reason. I am one of the worst about giving birthday cards and special event cards... but cards just because... I love that. I am aware that it makes no sense. No surprise really!

Anyway, here is my card tutorial.

Check out How to Make Your Own Cards by Emily McLemore on Snapguide.

136 cards in 2 1/2 hours

Since moving into our new house, I haven't had a place to create or craft. The house is wonderful and everything our family needed, but I lost my craft desk and space. sad face. Last night I was feeling blah and just needed to create something!

In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week and feeling left out since high school teachers don't get the love that elementary teachers receive. We get a paycheck, that's about all the love we get. (told you I was blah) I decided to make cards for my fellow high school staff members. I've done this before, but not in a couple of years?? wow. that's a long time.

So.. back to the cards. I got everything out and at 8pm started making cards. I had helpers that asked lots of questions and wanted to touch things. But I'm pretty efficient and started cutting paper. I make 3"x3" cards as they are cute, cost effective and they fit in our mailboxes at school.

If you plan on ever making bulk cards, I suggest cutting the paper first. I randomly chose paper that kinda of coordinated, but really I just wanted all of the cards to look decent with one color of ink. Simplicity is the key to bulk cards! Cut all of the 3"x6" strips and then the 2"x2" accent paper. Then fold the cards.

Next get ready to stamp. I stamped the sentiment first. I knew the sentiment that I wanted, but it took me a few different tries to decide on my accent stamp.

Next I stamped the accent stamp and then flipped the pieces over, applied tape to 20 or 30 squares at a time and adhered to the front. I varied the placement on the front of the card.

Now that the cards are made, it's time to embellish.

It is important at this point to just go with the flow. I use glue dots and just put coordinating buttons on the roll of glue dots about 20 at a time. Pick up a button and put it on the card. DO NOT LINGER on this step :)!!

And there you have it. 136 cards in 2 hours.

This morning, I ran to the store and picked up a bag of mixed chocolate miniatures. These are perfect for the inside of these cards. I rolled the glue runner on about 20 cards at a time and slapped a piece of candy down.

 And there you go!

All in it was about 2 1/2 hours. Not bad for a last minute project!

Paper, stamps and ink are Close To My Heart.

A Few HandMade Quick Card How-to's and tips!

WARNING!

IF YOU ARE NOT A CRAFTER,
YOU WILL WANT TO SKIP THIS POST!!

For the rest of you, here are a few how-to's
and tips for fast and easy handmade cards using scraps.

Here are few pictures of the finished cards. I made 12 cards using only the scraps from a set of pages I made. I don't think they look like cards made from leftovers!

In order to get the quantity of scraps for the cards, I had to make some pages :) Here are the pages. I used one paper pack (it had 12 pattern papers and 10 cardstock plus I used an assortment of base pages.) This made 26 12x12 pages, or 13 layouts. For more information on how I do that, search page patterns in my search bar!

1. After taking pictures of my pages and ooh and ahhing over more picture ready pages, I started with my stack of scraps. Sort the scraps into groups according to WIDTH!
2. Any piece that has a width of 4" or more I put back into my bag. I consider this to be too big to waste on a card. I might use it later, but it's a keeper for a scrapbook page in my opinion!
3. Now, I take my pile of 2" scraps and sort those according to pattern and color. This is the pile I start with when making cards.

4. Once sorted, I pick up a 2" piece and glue it onto a card base. No real thinking goes on here.  I will cut it to size in one direction, but I really do just try to only make one cut per piece of paper at this stage of card making. By doing this, in a matter of a minute I have card bases ready to go!
5. Now, add a pop of interest by using up first the remainder larger scraps and then go to the 1/2" and 1" stacks to tie two different patterns together or for just a fun band. The key at this stage is to make a nice looking card, but to not spend more than a minute on the layout. We aren't making award winning card designs here. We are a making a dozen cards in flash!

6. With the 12 card bases ready, I then look for a few stamps to use and try my best to keep it to only 2 or 3 different stamps and inks.
7. I stamp the sentiment on the card sometimes, but I happen to be really, really bad at placement and smudging. So, I have learned to stamp on another piece of paper and glue. Besides, I think it looks nice when the sentiment is layered. :)
8. Finally, I spend most of the time embellishing the cards. Over the years, I have made LOTS AND LOTS of heavily embellished and thick cards, but they then don't fit in the envelope very well and it's expensive to mail them.  So, I try to just embellish with flat things or try to keep it somewhat simple.  As you would guess, I only use what's readily available.  I'm not going to go out and buy coordinating ribbon for my cards! That would ruin the free factor!
9. So there you have it. My completed cards. Because I can only do a couple of things at a time and have to referee children, or cook or clean or whatever, I can't tell you how much time was spent making the cards, but probably no more than 2 hours total if I had to guess to make 12 cards! Not bad!! And even better, my premade card box has been refilled!

And here is one last look at the set of stuff.

12 cards.

26 pages

and a bag of scraps to use when I put pictures on my pages.

Papers and Stamps: Close To My Heart

A Dozen Handmade Cards

I've had an unexpected few days at home. Kylie and Lexi both have the flu and so not only am I not working, but I am TRAPPED inside my house!

So far I have cooked, cleaned, made a pathetic video, read a couple of books and made a stack of scrapbook pages. With the leftovers, I made the cards below.  This is the first time I've made cards in probably a year, and it was a nice change of pace. I like using up scraps of paper and embellishments. I may spend money on crafts, but when it comes down to it, I am very thrifty! Kinda nice to say that 12 cards made and not a dollar spent! (well, lots of dollars were spent at other times, but not specifically for this project!)

All the papers and stamps are from Close To My Heart. The embellishments come from here, there and maybe even a button or two from an old outfit!
I thinking of giving this set of cards away. What do you think? And would you use them?

Just Because You’re the Best Cards

I love making 3”x3” cards.  They are fun and quick and just cute :)

So I made a lot of them.  I love passing them out in the teacher’s boxes at school.  It’s fun to see them smile.  Some people know it’s me and sometimes I’ve even signed them.  But I really like just being a little more anonymous.  Sometimes they go in the trash, but some people still have some of the cards I made a few years ago.

If you have a little time on your hands and want to make a little project, go cut some paper to 3”x6”, fold it in half and get stamping.  These cards are more involved than some I have done as they have 5 stamps, an embellishment, and a candy, but really once you get a system down it’s not a cumbersome project.  In fact, I really enjoy using up my scraps and finding cute uses for some unused yarn and brads. 

Have a great week and I hope you find time for a little crafting!!

Supplies: CTMH Damask Tiles, Say it in Style, and Good Work stamps.  CTMH Petal ink. Purple assorted flowers and yarn.  Silver and white assorted brads.

“Manly” Cards

Yippee! I have used up another set of scraps!!  I really liked this paper and made a number of layouts for “guy things” but once again I had too many scrap pieces to just through them away, so I made cards. 

I really like how they turned out.  This puts me at close to 60 cards made this summer.  Now I just need to start sending them to people!!   

That’s it for today.  I have a really bad back tooth that has needed a root canal for a couple of years.  I am finally doing it on Thursday.  That tells you how I am feeling.

An album for a Daddy and of course, more scrap pages and cards!

Yes, Father’s Day has come and gone, but I wanted to show you all what I made for Doug.  These years are speeding past and I wanted to make an album that we could go back and look at all of the Father’s Days easily.  So here you have it.  A picture from each year taken on Father’s Day (or as close to it as possible). 
Amazing isn’t it! To make sure that we will have matching pages for the future, I have gone ahead and made 20 pages to finish the book. With kids spread out in ages as far as ours are, it’s a lot of years in order to get them all grown!

The above album is 8x8, so I had some great scraps. With the leftovers, I have made some regular 12x12 scrapbook pages and cards.  Here they are. I have to say, I love my manly cards!!

Thanks for stopping by.  Go do something creative today!