Holiday Card Making Tips and Tricks
Holiday card making is a great way to add your personal touch to the holidays and to let the recipient know how much you care. You have control over the look and the sentiment of the card. This way your card will deliver just the right message. If you are beginner, then here are some tips and tricks to help you to start making your own handmade holiday cards.
Secrets to Holiday Card Making Success
Time, materials, and design are they keys to successful holiday card making. These concepts apply to other occasions when you’ll be creating a large number of cards, such as weddings.
Time
Time is the first thing to consider when deciding to make your own holiday cards. Answer the questions below. They will help you to understand the element of time in terms of your holiday card making.
- Do you know how long it will take a single card up to your standards? (Perfectionists out there know what I am getting at.)
- Do you know how many cards you have to make?
- Can you create that many perfect cards?
- Did you start early enough based on the answers to the above questions?
TIp: Give yourself as much time as possible. Based on my experience, it always seems to take much more time than I think it should.
Materials
Materials are the second thing to consider when planning to make your holiday cards. They are critical to your success in holiday card making. They impact both the time and design.
Paper
Based on my holiday card making experience, buying Holiday Paper Sets/Packs/Pads are the way to go. You will find them to be beneficial in terms of budget, time, and design.
- It is a budget friendly way to purchase a variety of coordinating paper for your card making project.
- It is time friendly in terms of shopping for paper and card designing. You won’t have to second guess yourself if the papers go together.
Paper Buying Tip: Buy more than you think you need. Enough to cover you for the oops and the people you just don’t know how you could have forgotten.
Paper Trick: Pre-made card bases are a real time saver and do not take away from the design or the personal touch of a handmade card.
Paper Tip: If you insist on cutting your own card base, then I would do that at the beginning when you are fresh and less likely to have an oops with the paper cutter.
Inks
Make sure your inks are in good condition. They should be juicy which means fresh and full of ink. The surface of the pad should be clean, meaning free from other craft supplies, such as embossing powder or glitter. Click here to learn more about inks.
Adhesives
Please check back for a future post dedicated exclusively to card making adhesives.
- Zip Dry Paper Glue—dries quickly but you still have a little wiggle room if you need to move the piece a smidge.
- Tape—roll on glue tape is a double sided adhesive that doesn’t require cutting. This a good thing when you are mass producing cards.
Tool Tips
- Paper Cutter—make sure it has a sharp blade in it and that you have extra blades. If your blade is not sharp enough your cut paper won’t have clean edges.
- Scissors—make sure you have a good pair of detail scissors with sharp edges. This is important if your design includes hand-stamp images that will be cut out around the edges.
- Time Tip: Cut your image out before coloring or embellishing it. This way if your cutting goes awry, then you didn’t waste your time on coloring/embellishing.
Design Recommendations
- Make your design as simple as possible. Or, have an alternate design that is simple just in case you are running short on time.
- Another approach is to create a base design that could go out as is or if time allows embellish it.
Holiday Card Making Inspiration
These cards illustrate the recommendations above.
These Halloween cards have a simple design, but are still festive. To add some interest to card A I used a special shape die-cut on the paper used for the message. To add some interest to card B I filled in the letters with Stickles™ Glitter Glue. Click here to learn more about Stickles.
Here is another example of recommendation #1. Version B requires more time than A because the cat image was heat embossed and cut out.
Gingerbread Man card A is an example of a card that could out as is. Card B shows how you could embellish it if time allows.
