Showing posts with label cards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cards. Show all posts
Sunday, 9 January 2022
Valentine’s Cards
Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, have you found that perfect card for you Valentine. If not then take a look at some of the ones that I have found on the internet. I hope that you like what I have found and maybe even pick one or at the very least get you thinking about finding a Valentine’s Day card for you loved one.
I hope that you liked the selection I found for you.
Monday, 31 August 2020
Butterfly Birthday Greeting Cards
For many people the start of September marks back to school but for me it is Birthday time of year as a good seventy percent of my families Birthdays fall in September. While I was looking for cards to send, I thought that I would make a note of some of the ones that I liked and show you. One of my Aunts likes butterflies.
Thursday, 4 January 2018
Valentines day greeting cards
Below is a
selection of valentines day greeting cards I have found online to help you get
your romance blooming.
Sunday, 30 October 2016
Save Money on Christmas Cards
This year and every year going forward.
The holidays are coming and you can sense
that your credit cards are taking a deep breath in expectation of all the debt
that is going to be put on them. How do I know that the holidays are coming,
the stores are starting to expand their Christmas products (that have been in
store since August) out over the whole store. This is the time to start to plan
your holidays, what gifts to buy and for whom, how many Christmas cards you
will need and who you will be sending them too, checking the list twice to make
sure you have not left anyone out. Time to put that year planner to use and
mark of days that you will not be available as you have already agreed to go to
a social gathering.
Let’s get one point straight, saving money
on Christmas cards will not mean that you will be sending poor quality cards or
that everyone will be getting the same card for the next twenty years but if
you do find value cards at hundreds for pennies then I will show you haw you
can use them letter on. Knowing how many Christmas cards you will need and for
whom will mean that you are prepared when you come across an opportunity like a
sale in a store. I know some people that got some or all of this year Christmas
cards in the January sales (that would be me). So get that list written after
you have finished this post so that you will be ready for the next opportunity
you come across.
You may have missed the January sales but
there will be other sales both on the internet and in the high street before
the holidays, in fact it feels like not a week goes by without me getting an
email telling me about a sale with 20%, 30%, 40% or 50% off. When I find cards
that I like and want to buy I make a note of the product number in a file on my
computer, I group them together under the site if found them on like Zazzle,
Greeting cards Universe or Cafépress so that when I get notice that the site is
having a sale I can go straight to the cards on the site, saving me both time and
money.
Making your own Christmas cards can be fun
and very enjoyable with the added advantage that the card will be uniquely yours
and that the recipient will not be getting the same card from anyone else. You
maybe thinking that you have no skill in making cards so yours will look
terrible and cheap but with a little practice you can be producing wonderful
cards that your friends and family will love.
Everyone has some skills that can be
applied to card making, weather that be sewing, scrap booking, photography,
calligraphy or even finger painting that you loved back in kinder garden. All
of the skills used in card making are easy to learn but you do not need to
learn all of them, just the one or two that you need to make the card you are
working on at the moment.
So now I guess you are thinking “how are you going to save money after
buying all the card making equipment and the materials you will waste learning
the skills needed”. First off, do not buy any card making equipment, let me
say that again DO NOT BUY ANY CARD MAKING EQUIPMENT not at first anyway because
at the moment you do not know what you need. Make do with what you have around
the house and as you make cards you will learn what you want from your tools,
maybe you need bigger scissors or smaller scissors or it is not scissors you
need at all but a craft knife. Rather than learning new skills using your card
stock try honing your skills using plain printing paper, the cost of a ream of
printing paper is less than one or two greeting cards and before you have
gotten half way through the paper you will be confidant in many new skills that
you can add straight to your card stock.
Not everyone is confident to make greeting
cards starting from just an idea; some need a little help before they can
believe that they can do it, so here are two methods to help you get started.
The first is kind of like a kit greeting
card. When you buy a greeting card you like you down load a file or a PDF that
has all of the key elements on and maybe some extra ones so that the PDF could
be used to make a birthday card or a thank you card. If you make an error you
can just reprint the PDF and start again or just use the element that you need.
This bring us to the money saving aspect of this kind of greeting card, the PDF
sits on your computer and if you need another card you print it out again, if
you need 10, 20 or 100 you just keep printing out as many as you need. It does
not stop there, as you get more adventurous you can start to mix and match
different elements with different cads giving you more unique greeting cards. A
good place to start is Digi Design Resort or at Crafts U Print as well as
having many card templates they also have lots of tips and an active forum
where you can ask questions, they also have a selection of free templates for
you to down load and try to see if it is for you.
The last method is to alter cards to make
them uniquely yours, remember them bargain cards you found. You can add as
little or as much as you like after all the card did not cost much or was even
free. From adding glitter to highlight a few elements to a complete makeover so
that you can not recognize the original card. If you want to cover large areas
of the card in glitter it is easer to paint on the glue and then sprinkle on
the glitter but if you want to add glitter to smaller elements of the card like
the trim on a Christmas tree you can buy glitter in different colours already
mixed with glue and this method is like drawing with the glitter or like piping
icing on a cake. I design greeting card on my computer and then print the image
on to card blanks of different colours to get different effects One time I
printed the image upside down, rather than throw the card away I cut in two and
added it to one of my bargain cards (the right way round) with a strip of
coloured paper on the spine of the card to make it look a bit like a book so
that the only part of the bargain card my recipient would see was the inside
massage. Altering bargain greeting cards can also be a great way to get your
children involved to make personalized Christmas cards for their grandparents
and friends.
If you have found this post useful then
please share it or leave a comment or both. If you know of any other money
saving tips or crafting sites leave a link in the comments so others can
benefit.
Sunday, 14 September 2014
Making your own greeting cards
Sepia Rose Happy 100th Birthday Greeting Card by martinspaperstore
Look at 100th birthday Cards online at Zazzle.com
Sending greeting cards to loved ones and
friends on special occasions like Birthdays, holidays and anniversaries can
give you great satisfaction and the receiver gets the great feeling that not
only did you remember but you also took the time to send them a greeting card.
What could be better that that, well how
about making that greeting card your self? Now before you start to put up all
kinds of reasons why you could not make a greeting card stop. There are many
ways to make greeting cards that are unique from you too the receiver, from
embellishing bought greeting cards to making them from scratch.
Happy 52nd Birthday Flower Pansy Card by martinspaperstore
See other greeting card templates on zazzle.com
Now you may have to learn new skills or
adapt old ones, the thing is to play to your strengths and to slowly move out
of your comfort zone and not jump right out of it. You can embellish existing
greeting cards by following my earlier post at Hand made Greeting cards The next step up from this is to buy a greeting card kit. You can buy greeting
card kits from many good craft stores or on line from the likes of Crafts U Print.
The kits that you get from craft stores of shows might have a better finish
with thicker card stock, gloss finish and metallic inks but if you make a
mistake you might have to buy another kit. On the other hand the kits that you
download from sites likeCrafts U Print you can print out over and over again which
makes them cost effective when making greeting cards for holidays like
Christmas. You can also experiment printing the greeting card kit onto
different paper, card or even photo paper for that gloss effect.
Pink and Green Flower Happy 94th Birthday Greeting Card by martinspaperstore
Check out other note cards online at Zazzle.
Warning; from here on out it can get very
addictive! You will soon find that you are mixing and matching from different
greeting card kits and from here it is only a small step before you are making
your greeting cards from scratch.
You can take the elements and colour them
and combine them on your computer making a greeting card ready to be printed
straight onto a card blank or just plain card that you then cut to size. Or you
could print out all the elements and colour and construct them by hand on your
kitchen table or a combination of both. Each way has its own merits and
difficulties, please keep in mind that methods that other people use to get
results that they like mean nothing unless you can repeat the method and it
gives you the result you want, by all means try new methods and if it works for
you then great, if not let it go.
You can spend a small fortune on card
making equipment and supplies if you are not careful which can make you think
twice about the claims that many websites say that they can save you money by
creating your own greeting cards! In pure money terms you are probably better
off buying your greeting cards in a job lot from a discount where house for the
next ten years and do not forget to post the cards off early so that you only
pay second class postage.
Making your own greeting cards is so much
more that saving a dollar or two, it is about unleashing your creativity and
putting love into the greeting cards that you send. Your loved ones and friends
will know that you have put in time and effort to make their greeting card or
will think that you have spent a lot of money on a unique hand crafted greeting
card.
Many of the tools and supplies that you
will need you may already have, epically if you have children, which by the way
card making is a great activity you can do with them. Even if you do not have
children shopping in the children’s section of a supermarket will get you six
big tubes of different colour glitter glue for less than the cost of one small
tube at a craft store. Sure the quality is less but till you have to have used
both you will not know that. When you are just starting out keep the cost low
till you know that this is what you like, after all most of the tools only make
one particular job easy, it could sit in your tool box for years.
You’re not over the hill at 65 greeting card by martinspaperstore
Design unique personalized note cards from zazzle.com.
Below are links to sites where you can get
the tools and elements you need to make greeting cards, they range from free to
hundreds of dollars, I do not recommend one over another, after all what works
for me might not work for you.
Computer programs to help you make greeting
cars on your computer;
Sites where you can get information on
making greeting cards and greeting card kits and tools, some of which may ask
you for your email so that you can get the free stuff.
Here are some sites where you can get free
elements to use in making greeting cards for your personal use.
And here is a site where you can enter a
free draw at www.ppjump.co.uk/cc51
to get loads of goodies.
Russian Doll Happy 5th Birthday Greeting Cards by martinspaperstore
Look at Happy Cards online at Zazzle.com
Now you may think that this is all too much
trouble and you would rather just pick a greeting card and order it, well that
is fine and if you are looking for a greeting card that you may not find on the
high street then have a look at;
And if they do not have what you want you
can always ask the artist at Hreeting Card Universe greeting card universe to make the card you want.
Sometimes making greeting cards for your
loved ones and friends is all the gratification you need but sometimes your
output is greater than the needs of your close ones. It would be nice if you
could reduce the cost of your past time, better still if you could make a
profit! Over the next couple of blog posts I will talk you through making money
from your greeting card making, both hand made and digital.
Abstract Christmas Tree in blue with seasonal gree Cards by martinspaperstore
Design unique personalized note cards from zazzle.com.
Disclaimer, some of the links but not all
in this blog I make money from if you click on them or purchase from the
website, after all I need to feed my family.
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