Easy-to-Make Handmade Cards

I don't know about you, but I love to give and receive a beautiful handmade card. I just think it says so much more, especially if the person who gives it to me made it, and I think the people that I give my handmade cards to really appreciate that. I like to make them even so fancy that the person might want to frame them. But sometimes I just wanna make them really quick, and these are some pretty quick cards. One of the things that I always try to do is find my cards on sale somewhere, and I don't like to make my own cards 'cause that's the actual paper part, that's just extra work. I really just wanna decorate them with fun stuff, so I always start with some pre-made cards, and because scrapbooking is so popular right now, you can usually find them in the scrapbooking section. This box, which has 40 cards and envelopes, costs me $4, so it's a lot cheaper than making your own paper cards too. And then I save my scraps, my one-ofs, if I've only got one button left, one this left, and I put them in a little container that I use to make cards with. So I can just grab my cards, grab my container, and sit down and make cards if I want to. It's pretty simple, if you use a glue stick to begin with and then stitch later, so I'll put together five or six cards and then go stitch them later rather than put it together and then stitch it. The glue stick helps with that. I try to find things that are unusual and different. This card here has a piece of Lutradur that was leftover on the back and a piece of dyed fabric, a little bit of ribbon and a lone fish button. Here we've got a little bit of silk here, two different types, a couple of ribbons that are couched on, and then some hot embellishments that go on with the iron that have their own glue behind them. Here we just have a beautiful piece of velvet, cut in an unusual shape, that kind of mimic the shape of this piece of metal here, and then some fun fiber stitched around it. I like the simplicity of this one. This is just a beautiful piece of embroidered cotton fabric that was hand dyed. I used some of those Hotfix jewels again, to put as the center of the flowers, a nice soft muted background, and a couple of decorative stitches on my machine. Here we just have two different fabrics, one that's highly textural and one that's regular quilting cotton, a little bit of couched on kind of bunched up ribbon and one little bone bead. And then here we've got Lutradur again, some silk, some more fabric, some couched on hot set trims, and a little bit of rattail. I love the rattail 'cause it does funky things. So these are very quick and easy to make. I'm gonna start with two different cards here, one's a light green and one's a light apricot color. And I've just pulled together some coordinating fabrics here and some trims, and I'm gonna use my glue stick. Now, afterwards, these will be stitched. I think that's what makes them more kind of relatable to quilters is because we stitch them, and you need to keep that in mind, because the stitch is gonna show on the inside. So you wanna make sure your stitch is relatively nice. One of the things that it's really hard to do is knot off on paper so that the thread doesn't come undone. So I always go in with glue and glue down my beginning and ending stitch lines, so that it's gonna be secure, and it's not gonna come loose. But just keep in mind, that you're gonna see the stitch from the inside. Some people, therefore, stitch with thread on their bobbin that's the color of the inside of their cards, and that would mean that it doesn't show as much. Here, I'm going to use this wonderful trim here, a little bit of this pretty darker blue green fabric, and then some of this fabric here, and I may or may not glue this on because I'm gonna do some twisting with it, but I'm definitely going to glue this one on. So it's got torn edges, and I really like torn edges, so I'll tear it again, so it's about the width of the card And then I'm going to use my glue stick and just put some glue stick on there. I don't have to cover the whole surface or anything. I just need enough to keep it on until I go to stitch it. And I'm gonna put that down, about 1/3 the way down on the surface, and smooth it across. So, you thought, oh, it's all wrinkled, she's gonna put it down there all wrinkled. Well, I just smoothed out the wrinkles. It's not a big deal. And I just want it on there enough to hold it in place until I stitch it. I'll probably trim this later. I would rather it be a little long than be a little short. Then I'm gonna put this on, and this trim has a right and a wrong side. One side is shinier than the other. I'll see how many of these leaves I can get on there, and I'll trim them so that I don't have any of the little bits of string hanging off. So I've lined that edge up basically, and I'll come into this one too and get rid of this, that's not really part of that leaf's design. And then I'm gonna put it so that it's dropped, and I can see that the leaves can go down and not hit the bottom in case they wanna stand the card up. So I'll put it right down here, so it's dropped. And I'll just turn it over and put enough glue right along this edge here, just to hold it in place, because that's the only place I'm gonna stitch too. I don't wanna put glue on the rest of it if I'm not gonna stitch that portion down. Now I'm going to twist this 'cause I really like to put twisted fibers on, but I'm gonna have to thin it out a bit first. And this is really a scrap because it's not even on grain or anything, so I can't even tear it. And I just want a strip that's, I don't know, 1/2" wide or so, and I'm gonna split the difference between where this is and the top of that, and I'm gonna put a twisted line in there. So I'm just gonna draw that line with my glue. I'll just put it right here all the way across, and I'm gonna twist this fabric into a cord, and stick it in that glue, like, so, and then I'll cut off the excess, and that's gonna be my card. Pretty simple. I'll put a zigzag stitch across here and a zigzag stitch across here and probably top stitch here and along the sides, and then it'll be done, and it'll be a great little piece. I could also put some of these iron-on heat-set jewels, if I wanted to. They're really kind of cool. They've got just enough glue in them to hold them down, and so you're gonna put them down on the surface, like, so, and then iron them with an iron. They just glue right to it. So if I wanted to add a little bit of glitz to that card, I could really easily. Now this other piece has a few more fabrics I wanna use on it, and some ribbon too. And I chose the fabrics so that they had a variety of styles. Here I've got some embroidered flowers there and some kind of speckled here. This is darker than the rest, and it's got some texture on it too. And then this is a little piece of velvet, and velvet's always yummy. So I'm gonna use those, and then I'm gonna use the ribbon to kind of fancy it up. And I think I'll do it from this direction, so that the card stands up. And we'll probably start with this fabric here, and I'm gonna narrow it out. And trim it. Now notice, I didn't lay out my whole card. I don't have to lay out my whole card. I don't have to know what the next step is until I get this step down. If that makes you feel uncomfortable, then lay out your whole card. But I like the, what if, so I'm gonna set it down here, a little ways away from the fold. If it's too long, I'll trim that later. And the portion of this fabric that I really like is, of course, the embroidered part, so I'm going to clip and rip so that all the edges have a nice ripped edge to them. I'm gonna use that, but I think I'm gonna put this on top of this, so that this will give me some nice contrast in the back. Again, glue stick just until I can put it down. If you get your glue stick too thick, then it's gonna be really hard to sew through later. Here I'm gonna work at an angle, I just think it'll be more interesting. And smooth that out. Now later, if I want to, I can take off those little bits of string and stuff, but, you know, who knows if I'm gonna wanna do that or not. And then this guy, I'm gonna change the angle again, so that we have another angle. Like, so. And maybe it's not the velvet's turn this time 'cause I'm really liking what I have so far. However, I wanna use my ribbon, and I wanna use it in such a way that it's very dimensional. So I'm gonna kind of ruche it up, and I'm gonna ruche it up along the bottom of these flowers. So I'm gonna go ahead and put a line of glue in here. And I'm simply going to put down my ribbon, and I'm going to put folds in it as I put it down and just kind of hold it in place. And I really don't care what it looks like. I just want that wonderful texture, that wonderful color, and that wonderful sheen that the ribbon has. And I'll stitch that down when it's time to do the stitching. So I'll just cut. So a very fun, very texturized, wonderful fabric card. They're very easy. They're very fun to do, and your friends and family will really appreciate something wonderful that's made from you for them. Give it a try, I think you'll like it.