Sunday 14 September 2014

Making your own greeting cards


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.


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.


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.

forgotten bench post cards
forgotten bench post cards by martinspaperstore
Shop for White Postcards online at Zazzle.com

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.

trees and snow postcard
trees and snow postcard by martinspaperstore
Browse Trees Postcards online at Zazzle.com

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.


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.


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.



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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