Cardmaking
By Laura Hines
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About this ebook
This one-stop practical guide will show you how to say whatever you want creatively with hand-made greeting cards. To make your progress easier, it comes in a handy ebook format with colour photos and expert advice throughout.
Why spend a small fortune on generic high street greeting cards when you can create your own personalised message with just a few pieces of paper and the right book to guide you?
This book is your essential companion to making your own cards. It provides everything you need to create something imaginative and individual to give at Christmas, birthdays and every other occasion you can think of.
You’ll find out what materials you can use, learn fascinating new ways to use them and be fired by the wealth of ideas this book has to offer.
As a step-by-step guide to techniques ranging from calligraphy to bead work and embossing, this book won’t fail to inspire you with ideas for every event and every person.
Laura Hines
Laura Hines runs her own cardmaking business. She supplies local gift shops and sells at craft fairs around the country. Need to Know Cardmaking is her first book, building on the success of that business. She lives in the village of Hook Norton in Oxfordshire with her family.
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Book preview
Cardmaking - Laura Hines
Introduction
Card making has become enormously popular over the past few years. It is a hobby you can do in your own home and in your own time. Your cards can be as easy or as intricate to make as you like and it is an incredibly rewarding pastime. To make that special card for someone can give you as much pleasure as they will get on receiving it.
Experiment and have fun
As card making has become more popular, so the range of tools and materials available, such as embellishments, specialised pens and beautiful background papers, has grown too. There are also several magazines available that are very useful for getting ideas for your cards.
This book looks first at the basic tools and materials that you need for card making. They are not all essential items and can be added to your craft collection over time. For example, a good pair of scissors can be used until you buy a paper trimmer.
The book then moves on to the basic techniques used in card making, starting with making your own card blanks and envelopes. Although there are many different card blanks available to buy, it is very easy and less expensive to make your own. Also, if you want a particular non-standard shape or colour card blank it is useful to be able to make it yourself. The different techniques that are described include such skills as heat embossing, dry embossing, stencilling, iris folding and quilling. The ever popular decorative techniques of rubber stamping and paper punching are also included. There is a huge variety of both these items available and they can be expensive. If you join a local craft group or start your own with a group of friends interested in card making, this can lessen the cost considerably.
Each of the techniques explained in the second chapter of Card Making is used in the card designs. With such a wide variety of techniques to inspire you, the designs can be used either exactly as laid out here or as a basis from which you can develop your own ideas.
1 Tools and materials
There is a huge selection of tools and materials available from stationers and specialised craft shops. However, when starting out, all that you need are the basic items, such as card, pens, ruler, scissors and a few embellishments. Add to your collection as your hobby continues. This chapter outlines the tools and materials that you are most likely to want to use.
Tools and materials
Divided into different types of materials, the following pages look at paper and card choices, card blanks, pens and pencils, paints and brushes, adhesives, stamping and embossing tools, stencils, eyelets and brads and, finally, all those lovely embellishments.
Tools to cut, measure and fold with
It is more than likely that you will have a few of these objects already, but if not, take a trip to a craft store.
Bone folder This is a small tool (see top left of the photograph opposite) that can be used to crease, score and smooth down folds in paper and card. The pointed end is used to score folds and the rounded end is used to smooth the fold. The folds produced are neat and precise and give your cards a professional-looking finish. Although traditionally made from real bone, they are now made from plastic and Teflon.
Craft knife for detailed cutting. A good, sharp one is essential for cutting neat edges. Take great care when using them as they are extremely sharp.
Cutting mat (self-healing) This is very useful for measuring and cutting card and paper while protecting your table or work surface.
Paper punches These come in a variety of shapes and patterns. There are also many different corner and border punches that can be used to decorate your cards. A single-hole punch is a particularly useful tool to have as it is so versatile.
Paper trimmer A paper trimmer allows you to make quick, clean cuts giving a professional finish.
Plastic ruler Essential for all that measuring.
Scissors It is useful to have a few different sizes of scissors to work with and also some that create a patterned finish:
• Large – for cutting different materials.
• Small – for cutting detail.
• Decorative-edged scissors, such as deckle, wave, scallop and ripple, are available individually or in sets. They range from children’s to professional brands.
Steel ruler for cutting and tearing paper and card.
Tweezers Use tweezers for applying stickers, peel-offs and dried flowers to your cards.
Of course it’s possible to make cards without a paper trimmer and cutting mat, but if you can afford to buy these items they will make your life a good deal more straightforward.
Paper and card
There is a huge selection of hand- and machine-made card and paper from which to choose. It comes in a variety of finishes, such as matt, glossy, pearlised, metallic and corrugated, and also in different sizes. More specialised papers include:
Acetate paper images can be drawn or rubber stamped onto acetate and then coloured in with pens and glitter to give a special effect (for example, see Self-raising flowers on).
Background papers come in all manner of patterns and designs and they can also be used for cutting motifs from.
From left to right, this picture shows the following different finishes of machine-made card: matt, pearlised, metallic, corrugated and textured.
Handmade paper usually has a rough texture and can feature flower petals, leaves, wood and metallic flecks held within the paper. It is more expensive than other types of paper.
Mulberry paper is light, opaque and made from mulberry leaves, and contains strands of silk. It comes in many colours and when torn gives a feathered edge. It is very useful when you are layering paper and card.
Vellum can be plain, coloured or patterned and is semi-opaque. It is lovely to use when creating layered effects and it softens the lines of any patterns on underlying layers.
From left to right, this picture shows the following different finishes of more specialised papers: handmade, mulberry, background and vellum (both plain and patterned).
Must know
Make your own
It is always useful to have some ready-made card blanks in your card-making collection, but it is also easy to make your own. See pages for instructions on how to do this and if you would like an envelope to match, see pages
Card blanks and shapes
There is a huge range of styles and shapes of cards available to buy as card blanks in craft shops and stationers. Many different coloured cards are used for these blanks with matt, pearlised and more textured finishes. There are also more complex shapes available, with and without apertures. The three most commonly available single-creased card shapes are:
• 120 x 120mm
• 105 x 148mm
• 128 x 178mm
For something more complicated, you can buy or make your own double-creased card shapes:
Aperture cards There are card blanks with a wide variety of apertures available. Examples of aperture shapes of varying sizes are ovals, circles, squares, hearts, stars and Christmas trees.
A concertina card can be decorated right across one side, as all three panels will be visible on the finished card.
Gatefold cards open out like a pair of gates and are an ideal shape for invitations.
Three-panel cards are used when the middle panel has an aperture used to display a cross-stitched or embroidered image or a piece of work using iris folding. The side panel on the right can be folded in and stuck down to cover the back of the work. This gives a neat finish to the card.
Some examples of ready-made card blanks in a variety of sizes, materials and