Hand Made Cards

Today I thought I would share something with you that is money saving and is also good fun! After my post about my friend Kate's Birthday and the card that I made her, I decided it was time to let you in on my secret life of card making!

Birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Anniversaries, Valentines Day, Weddings, New Babies and Christmas! Surely the pennies have got to add up!

I refuse to buy cards, and instead, make my own!  I know this sounds like it's going to be a bit of a faff, but really it can be as simple or extravagant as you want it to be. Here are my tips for stress free card making.

• Buy a  packet of blank cards. I bought a set of 50 brown, recycled cards with envelopes from The Range for £5.99.
• Buy a small block of letter stamps. You can get sets for just 99p! You can buy these from Dunelm Mill or Hobbycraft. That's them in the picture below, nearest the camera.

• Buy an Ink Pad - You can get these for about £1.99 from Hobbycraft or Dunelm Mill too.
• Buy a roll of double sided sticky tape.
• Keep a collection of coloured or pretty papers.  My collection includes old wrapping paper, music sheets, sweetie bags and cake wrappers!

Once you have all of this it will tide you over for a very long time. The stamps are so easy and you can make something look professional and personalised with very little effort.

Below are some of the designs I have made over the last year or so.

This was a birthday card for a work colleague. For this design I used an old atlas. I Youtubed how to fold an origami crane, and stuck it on the front. Then I did the same for a dog and popped this little fella in as a surprise.

As you can see, this was for my Grandad. I found a picture of an old map online and printed it out, then I Googled how to fold the planes. They are just blue tacked on so that he could actually take them off to fly them!

You can just about see this one, it was a Birthday card for my Boyfriend's sister. But I think it would make a nice valentines day card. Again, I googled how to fold an origami heart.

This was for a friends Birthday. The pretty lace-style paper is actually a wrapper that came off of a cupcake. The buttons were from my collection, I thought she could make use of them if she wanted to.

These were the cards I gave out for Christmas last year. I made my own stamps using rubbers and a craft knife. (Maybe that will be a good tutorial for another day) Do you recognise the stamp in the shape of the present?

Here is the Mothers day card I made for my Mum this year. I don't know if you can tell but I made mini bunting in the shape of hearts. It took bit of time!

I hope this has inspired you to try out card making if you haven't already. Do you have a particular style when card making?

Laura xXx