Ideas for Making Handmade Cards

Writing yesterday's gift tag "how to", I remembered how I used to make birthday cards in the same style when I was a teenager.

They were an awesome way to use up scrap crafty stuff / make use of all those bits of fancy paper and shiny foil that were too pretty to be thrown away... and because they involved using scraps, each card ended up being slightly different.

To make your cards...

1) Choose an embellishment like a fancy sequin or a button

2) Stitch it to some pieces of felt to frame it, completing your card "topper"

3) Then add more layers of coloured paper/foil/giftwrap from your stash

4) To assemble the card, first glue the layers of paper onto your card blank, then use craft glue or double sided tape to attach the topper to the card.

Here are a few old snaps I found of some cards I made in this style many years ago...

Combining plain coloured papers with a bit of fancy holographic / other interesting metallic gift wrap or card works really well - a small bit of sparkle goes a long way!

You can also make card toppers just using felt scraps and paper, no extra embellishments required.

Stitch together pieces of felt in a simple geometric design, and then "frame" the topper with a coordinating rectangle of paper or card.

I also loved to make handmade Christmas cards, picking a new theme every year and spending several happy hours making them all (oh to have the time to still do this!). I used these simple geometric designs for my cards one year, making all my cards in a colour scheme of gold, denim blue and brown.

I used gold sequins and beads from an old broken necklace, gold and blue felt scraps, gold card, bits of shiny gold fabric, scraps of denim from an old pair of jeans, blue sugar paper (construction paper) and bits of rough brown paper cut from used envelopes.

Brown paper is one of those love-it or hate-it things... I love a parcel wrapped in brown paper, and adore the contrast between its plainness and any sparkly ribbon added on top, but I know it's not for everyone! You can of course adapt any of these ideas to your own favourite colours :)

Please feel free to borrow one or two photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

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