I love creating handmade celebration cards and have been doing this for more than 20 years. I find it very gratifying, restful and rewarding to make my own personal greeting cards. It's actually a very good way to relax, by sitting with all of my craft paraphernalia laid out next to me and to simply allow the inspiration to flow!
A hand-made greeting card can be as complex or as simple as you wish it to be. A basic design can be very elegant and exceedingly effective. Simple designs are excellent for newcomers to card making to begin with. Consider mounting a die-cut decoupage design onto a plain blank card with a peel off sticker sentiment to complete the card, an easy enough design to come up with with not a great deal of equipment required, however rather interesting and effective.
Once you have mastered simple designs, try building on those ideas. Include an extra embellishment like a lace or a ready to use card topper. Begin incorporating background papers to a section or all of the card blank and include glittery or pearlised accents with the help of decorative glues. Rather than a decoupage picture, try rubber stamping a picture on top of some card, color the rubber stamped image with pens or watercolour paints, trim close to the stamped picture in a rectangular shape or square shape after which you can attach that rubber-stamped picture onto your card blank. Your own ideas will very quickly come to be larger, better and more complex designs. With a minimal amount of work you'll be able to come up with many very inspiring designs.
Once you begin to create a Birthday card, first of all you should think about is what person the card is for. Will it be for a young person or an adult, is it for a man or a woman, what are their particular pastimes and hobbies?. It's usually good to integrate a little something personal into your birthday card. If the card is for a golfer, a golfing picture, with golf embellishments would make a great birthday card and also will show that a large amount of deliberation went in to the card.
When you have chosen the topic for use on your card, you will need to pick the colour palette. A colour palette for a card might be guided by the colours from a decoupage picture or possibly a ready made decoration which you have already decided on. Select one or two colors from the decoupage image or embellishment and utilise those colours with the remaining portion of the card, colour co-ordinating all ribbons, embellishments or backing papers to those two colours. If you work with a rubber stamped picture then you can colour that image using your particular colour scheme and expand that scheme by means of colour co-ordinated extras.
To personalise your hand crafted birthday card, you can incorporate the person's name in the design of the card. This can be achieved with the aid of peel off sticker lettering, clear alphabet stamp lettering or should you have a steady hand, you'll be able to hand write his or her name using a decorative ink or glitter glue.
As a final point printing an insert for your birthday card with a lovely personalized message like a poem or lovely message really completes your handmade birthday cards.
Author Resource:
Shopping for craft supplies ? Go to www.glittermonster.co.uk for a big selection of craft punches , decoupage, card, paper and craft materials.
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