Giving greeting cards for birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, christenings, graduations and many other special occasions has become a social custom which can strain your budget. Solve this problem by making your own unique and personalized cards at almost no cost. Once you develop card-making expertise you could even supplement your income by selling your cards.
A Necessary Creative Skill
A most important skill for making cards with free materials is to become crow-like. You need to keep your eyes and mind wide open and collect (and organize) anything and everything that might be useful. My daughter complained endlessly about all my “stuff” until one day, while making cards, she exclaimed: “Gee Mom, you have such interesting things.”
The Card Blank
For an unlimited supply of free paper of different thicknesses, colors and textures learn to make handmade paper using recycled waste paper.
Other sources of free board and colored papers for cards include off-cuts from commercial printers, paper waste collection centers and the backing papers for products you buy. You can even alter a thin book to make a card.
An Image for Your Card
When selecting the main decorative element for the card you can personalise it by considering not only the occasion but also the interests of the person you are giving it to. For example, a cat lover will adore a Christmas card with a cat in a Christmas basket.
Images of almost anything can be downloaded from the web and then edited to suit your needs. A new trend is digital stamping where you can download and print line drawings of a large variety of images and use various art techniques to color the print.
You may still have some rubber stamps from when these were in vogue (or your kid may have some hidden in the toy box). A less well known technique which gives a hazy, ethereal effect to the selected image is to place a picture cut out from a magazine face down onto clean paper and rubbing the back with lacquer thinners. The image is transferred onto the paper.
Recycled Embellishments
Recycling offers endless possibilities. Any scraps of paper and cardboard can be used for backgrounds and embellishing - offcuts from scrapbooking projects, used wrapping paper, fancy envelopes that advertisements and invitations are sent in, the board that backs products you buy, clothing tags and postage stamps. Look out for old books with yellowed paper which are being thrown out, or even old sheet music, letters, postcards and photographs. Rubber stamps work well on used tea bag paper. Scraps of fabric, ribbon and lace, buttons and sequins can be effective card decorations.
A very interesting effect is achieved by ironing and melting colorful plastic wrap packaging between sheets of paper. This requires some experimenting for the right temperature and effect with different plastics.
If you paint, keep a sheet of newsprint next to you and randomly clean the paintbrush on it before you wash the brush. Continue until the whole page is filled and you end up with a beautiful colored sheet for a background or even as wrapping paper.
Found Objects
Use objects lying around the house as decorations for cards. Examples are small keys, flat beads from broken costume jewelery, broken earrings and other what-nots hiding in drawers and trinket boxes. If you are making other crafts as well consider adding a small gift as part of the decoration on the card, for example a small hand soap from leftover soap scraps.
Nature is an endless source of found objects which will vary in different locations. Ideas here are pressed flowers and leaves, natural skeleton leaves, flat seed pods, shells, bits of interesting bark, pretty feathers and porcupine quills
Inspiration
Stuck for design ideas? Get some creative stimulation from the many sites on the web dedicated to handmade card making. Also keep your eyes open for card design ideas while shopping and in magazines. Inspire your children to become creative by helping them to make greeting cards for their own friends.
Frieda Paton - A published nurse author, Frieda has variety in her life being a part-time nurse, business owner and craft producer.
