Lots of Cards!

Have you tried bulk card-making? It's a wonderful way to create beautiful greeting cards at low cost. What you see below is a 16 card workshop (only 14 cards shown) that I made from 8 pieces of colonial white cardstock for card bases, 4 pieces of cardstock for the card fronts, and just three 12 x 12 pieces of patterned paper from the Caprice set. That's cheap folks! I even only used one stamp set, the September Word Puzzle. The Wishes book from Close to my Heart has this wonderful bulk card making pattern that took me about an hour to cut, an hour to put together and an hour to decorate, not bad for 16 cards. Even though the pattern is for 2 of eight different cards, I challenge you to see if you can tell which cards used the same pattern. Do you have three hours to make 16 beautiful handmade cards? Go for it!

Here's more cards made from this same pattern.

Key To My Heart

One pattern - Three Looks - Card Three

Alright, this is the third card I made from the same pattern. This time I'm using random stamping. Cut a 6" by 6" card front using colonial white paper and cut a 6" by 12" piece of colonial white, score it at 6" and fold to make the card base.

I used the Gear Up set to randomly stamp the 5 3/4" by 5 3/4" paper but I haven't taken you through it step by step for a good reason. This very set and random stamping are taught on our Close to my Heart Art and Soul online tv show this month!! You can see exactly how to do it here!

Now that you've followed the random stamping tutorial on the Art and Soul program, attach it to a 6" by 6" piece of juniper cardstock.

We're using some of the Key to my Heart paper on this card again. Cut a piece of patterned paper from the set, 5 1/4" by 3". You will also need a piece of tulip cardstock cut 2 1/2" by 2 1/2" and three long strips of paper (sorbet) 11 1/2" by 2 1/4", (juniper) 11 1/2" by 1 1/2", and (tulip) 11 1/2" by 1/2". Cut a colonial white piece of cardstock 3 inches in diameter and a tulip piece of cardstock, 3 1/4 inches in diameter (not shown).

Take a border punch of any type and cut along the sorbet strip and distress all pieces.

Using your dry embossing tool and trimmer lay your juniper strip down so that you can press the paper down lightly into the groove on the trimmer, do it every half inch then turn the piece over and sand to make the white core of our cardstock show. Attach it to the sorbet paper letting the fancy edge show on the top.

Glue the tulip strip on the juniper on the opposite end of where you have the ruffle.

Put the larger patterned piece 1/4" from the left hand side and 1/4" from the top of your random stamped paper.

Glue the tulip paper square piece about and inch and a half from left side, two inches from the top of the random stamped paper.

Fold your long strip around the back of the card with the ends on the front (you'll notice I turned the card this time so the strip is vertical). Glue it about 1/2 inch from the right hand side. Glue your white circle to the tulip circle and stamp a set of the "gears" from the Gear Up stamp set in the middle, you can use any of the matching colors, tulip, juniper, creme brulee or sorbet. Attach circle where the strip meets in front of the card.

Add a window charm to the middle of your circle to really make it pop! Take the "gear up to party" stamp and stamp on the polka dot paper and you're finished. Now see how three cards can look so different even with the same pattern, it's really amazing and we even used the same color and paper set on all of them and they still each look unique. There is no excuse that you need to buy a ton of stamps, paper and inks to make great cards. A few stamp sets, a set of good ink colors, papers of your choice and the Wishes book are all you need. In the next few days I'm going to recommend my favorites if you are just beginning to make cards. Tomorrow I will give you the top ten stamps I can't live without to get you started!

Wishes

I'm going to show you a something a little different today. Close to my Heart has a brand new card-making book called Wishes. In it there are several bulk card patterns that show you how to make many cards from just a few pieces of pattern and cardstock papers. Today I sat down with it and made twelve cards that I'm thrilled with. Because it's a copyrighted book I cannot give you measurements nor show you the patterns I used but I would like to show you the cards and comment on a few different aspects of bulk card-making. Here's the book, it really is a must have. You can order it through my website here.

The bulk card-making requires really very few papers, especially when you see how many cards they make. For this particular one I used 2 pieces of patterned paper and 2 pieces of cardstock for the basic layering. You also need six pieces of plain cardstock to make the card bases. The one I used made 12 6" x 6" cards. Now here's where I tweaked it a bit. I like colorful cardstock for my card fronts but I don't want to waste my colored cardstock on the whole card so to this particular bulk card pattern I also cut 12 6" by 6" card fronts in pretty colors. The kit I used for these cards was from a constant campaign we had a few months back called Key to my Heart. The paper is some of my favorite, too bad I can't get it anymore (yet)! Here are the papers I cut for the cards.


With any card bases you need to score them halfway down the sheet with an embossing tool and the groove in your trimmer. Yes you can just fold the card but it folds so much smoother doing it this way.


If you've been watching my blog for the past 16 days you know that I really like to use an embossing tool to add texture to my cardstock. I don't really like the look of plain cardstock too much so making some grooves in my papers and sanding them really makes for a cool looking card.


Here are the beautiful colors of cardstock from Key to my Heart. I made grooves about every inch then turned the card and did the same in the opposite direction, pretty neat, huh?


Once I cut all the pieces according to the patterns and did my dry embossing it was just a matter of following the directions in the Wishes book to put the basic card together. To make the cards really special you have to add your own creative touches.

Card 1 With this first card I rounded the corners of two of the sides and used a eyelet border punch to add interest to the sorbet colored pattern paper. I added the juniper paper because the little squares I cut were the same pattern as the paper strip behind them. I love how it made them pop out. I had a whole bunch of leftover stamped circles (Kanji Phrases stamp set) already mounted on a circle and covered in a window charm along with the matching translation so I just plopped one right on this card along with the matching English translation of the Japanese character. It didn't need anything more than that.


Card 2 On this card I added the elusive "magic mesh". We don't sell it but I sure recommend you find some. This stuff is self-adhesive and adds so much to cards and layouts. I again used my Kanji stamp and found a juniper strip of paper to fill up the bottom of the card a bit. With embossing and distressing it already looked great but I also punched the borders for good measure. The upper right corner was looking empty so I used the ever useful Adorning Corners stamp set to fill it up.


Card 3 Again on this card I put some magic mesh, the Kanji stamp and phrase. This time though I added a big circle behind the stamped piece and dry embossed it as if I were cutting a pie! I love how it looks. Remember on all of these I kept the basic pattern from the book but just added my own little embellishments to finish them off.


Card 4 Here's a card using a lot of the same elements but still managing to look completely different than the rest. I added magic mesh, punched a border, attached my Kanji character and phrase and that was all it needed to turn out great.


Card 5 I love the way the flowers look doubled up here. Can you see how I diagonally embossed the sorbet cardstock for a different look? The brads match the papers, of course, cause all of our products are matchy-matchy!


Card 6 On this card I went Stickease. Since none came with the Key to my Heart kit I used ones from Unforgettable which has a lot of the same colors. I punched out the holes in the yellow (Creme Brulee) cardstock then added Stickease flowers in the center accented with brads. The sorbet pattern paper is punched with a border punch, has a sentiment stamped on it and then the flower on the left hand side is also a stickease with a brad in the center.


Card 7 This card is very simple, the basic design is from the book then I punched it with a border punch, slapped a couple of stickease on and added brads.


Card 8 This card was a little different but I did use the eyelet border punch and a big circle again, this time embossed straight across and vertically. I used a brand new stamp set I got in the mystery box just today too. The flower has a button in the middle of it threaded with waxy flax. A couple of brads complete the card.


Card 9 This is the most modern looking of the cards, the three circles were in my scraps stash and so I just layered them and stamped a sentiment. Three brads completed the look.


Card 10 This card has a stickease flower and a brad in the center. I also added a smaller flower from the stickase set on the yellow (creme brulee) punched out piece. I stamped a sentiment on the square and that was it for this easy card.


Card 11 This one has the Kanji character smack dab in the middle, a border punched piece of pattern paper and the Kanji phrase strip that I used on several others. Again, those were already done, leftovers from other card making excursions so no extra effort for me. You can do the same with your old embellishments.


Card 12 This final card was the best use of the stickease for me. I really love the title on here and the balance of the flowers with the brads. These cards were so much fun to make.


Now here's a little contest for you. There are twelve cards but only six patterns used. The first person who writes a comment telling me which cards match (i.e. card 1 matches card 4, card 2 matches card 7, etc.) and gets it right, gets one of the cards sent to them. Have fun!