Thank you so much for joining me this week. I've had fun learning about card making, I hope I've been able to take some of the mystic out of the process. Your sweet comments made all the work I put into the week worth it! Thanks also go out to my contributors for the week. I was amazed at the willingness of each card maker to offer their thoughts and share examples or sketches. And a special thank you to our give.away.day. sponsor, Lawn Fawn! It's been fun to see the comments on both our site and theirs! Welcome to our newest viewers via Lawn Fawn.
Today's post is the rest of the things I learned that didn't fit into any of the other categories. And some cards thrown in for good measure. :)
Awhile back, Mary Kay Seckinger decided that she really enjoyed making cards so in order to facilitate that habit, she started a card group. If this week has in any way encouraged you to explore this hobby more, she shared the how's of a putting together a card group:
Here's how ours works (I gather it's different from many, where they make X number of cards, and meet to trade them): The host chooses a theme (or the lack of one, sometimes), and prepares food. It's evolved into dinner, though when I hosted the first one I just made some fairly elaborate snack-y things. Each of us designs and kits a card for the number of people who've RSVPed. Then we show our cards, share any tips or tricks required to make our card, and begin passing our boxes or buckets around the table, making each card in turn. Typically we bring our own tools and adhesive, though there's always someone who forgets something critical (often me). As for how we got started, I just emailed all my friends that I thought might want to participate and invited them. For a while we had a mailing list set up for us, which would be very helpful, but didn't work for some people who weren't getting all the emails. So now we just share a list and forward it around. We meet once a month, typically the second Friday. Originally I'd imagined meeting at a public place like a library, rec center, even Whole Foods community room... but those places didn't work out. So we meet in our homes, and that's worked out fine.
card property of Becky Olsen
Next topic: size. Does it matter what size you make your cards? Not at all. Some of the gals make the standard 5.5" x 4.25" (that's an 8.5" x 11" sheet of cardstock cut in half, I only add that because I didn't catch on until I'd made a few cards. I thought it might be helpful to someone.) mainly because it's easy to put in an invitation size envelope. Others go with whatever size fits the bill. Sarah Hodgkinson is famous for her "honkin' huge" cards, some known to be 9" x 4" landscape. This is a good size because you can use bigger products Sarah says. Kimberly commented:
I do love doing 6x6 size cards most of the time. Square cards are just where I feel the most creativitely driven from.
card property of Kimberly Neddo
Valerie suggests starting small, even as small as 3" x 3" or tags. And Danielle is currently loving the pocket card (see example below) because:
It's so easy to make your own with patterned paper, and you can fill them with so many things... tags, lollipops, gift cards, letters, photos, etc
card property of Danielle Flanders
I love that there is no one right size, I think I'll enjoy the experimentation aspect of this suggestion.
Finally, I have a few last thoughts. Becky encourages you to just have fun, work with the mistakes and enjoy the process. I have to agree. I know that works well for scrapbooking, and since so many of these suggestions transfer to card making, it makes sense. Another thing I've learned is that if I find a design that is easy for me to create, I should make more than one. I fell in love with a stamp from Studio Calico and ended up making 4 of the exact same card because once I had the original one, I knew the rest would be easy.
card property of Emily Pitts
I hope you've enjoyed the week, I hope if you were as card-phobic as I used to be that maybe something you read this week has made you curious, made you want to try your hand at card making. Thanks for sticking with me! And you'll want to come back next week, I have seen the titles for the week's postings and, um, wow.
