Ideas for card craft beginner

mumoftwo

*BigBird* wrote: »

Hello. Can I seek some advice, as you all seem to be brilliant at card-making? I am planning to make my own wedding invitations. Up to now, I have only tried fairly basic card-making, just sticking things onto the cards. For the invitations, I want to keep the front of the card plan, with just mine and my boyfriend's initials stamped and then embossed using gold powder and a heat gun. Am I taking on something that is too tricky for a beginner? It sounds fairly easy from the websites I've looked at, but wouldn't mind a professional opinion before I go and buy all of the equipment.

Thanks :-)

Heatembossing your initials would look great, I love it, but it is not as easy as you think. Are you good at stamping? Because that is the first hurdle, you need special ink as well so that the powder will stick to it. And then you heat it, not too much and need to know when to take the heat away, You see it quite easy once you have done it a few times. It could look really classy.

So my advice it practise your stamping first and do quite a few samples before you do the real thing. What I would do is stamp the initials on a seperate rectangle or love heart shape (there are large heartshape punches you can buy so you don't need to cut it all out), heat emboss and then stick on the card with foampads, if the stamping goes wrong you can turn the heart over, try again and won't waste much if it goes wrong.
Do you want me to do one here to show you? I can post a picture if you want.

*BigBird*

mumoftwo wrote: »

Do you want me to do one here to show you? I can post a picture if you want.

Yes please, that would be a huge help. Thanks for the tip of doing the initials on a heart or something so I don't waste a whole card if I make a mess of it, I hadn't thought of doing that. I haven't tried stamping before, this is all new territory.

I have a vision of how I want the invitations to look, but not sure how I'm actually going to produce the finished article. We are getting married in a lovely little tower, which looks like a mini castle. I've found a picture of the venue and have set this as a "watermark" on the sheet that I intend to put inside the card with the invitation wording on it, so that the picture is very faint and the wording is on top of it. I therefore want to keep the front of the card very simple.

Getting the picture with the words on top was easy-peasy on the pc, it's the tricky arty stuff that I'm going to struggle with! Luckily we are not getting married til September 2009, so I have loads of time to practice.

Thanks also to polly1976 - your invitations look lovely. If my vision proves too difficult to actually produce, I hope you don't mind if I pinch your design! :rotfl:

polly1976

Hi bigbird of course i dont mind i wont charge you much lol:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: only kidding you could also change the silver card for the same colour as your bridesmaid dresses or the colour has your flowers im going to be doing some different invites so i will post a pic when ive done them if you like?

*BigBird*

polly1976 wrote: »

Hi bigbird of course i dont mind i wont charge you much lol:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: only kidding you could also change the silver card for the same colour as your bridesmaid dresses or the colour has your flowers im going to be doing some different invites so i will post a pic when ive done them if you like?

Ooo, yes please for pics. Been having a nosy through some of the pics one here and all of the cards are gorgeous. I'm inspired to start having a bash at making my own for birthdays etc from now on I feel a trip to the craft shop coming on tomorrow.

polly1976

*BigBird* wrote: »

Ooo, yes please for pics. Been having a nosy through some of the pics one here and all of the cards are gorgeous. I'm inspired to start having a bash at making my own for birthdays etc from now on I feel a trip to the craft shop coming on tomorrow.

You can get some great stuff from poundworld poundshops etc especialy for the basics. craft shops are great but can be exspensive try this web site for cheap card stock for your invites www.pdsarts.com

polly1976

Here is the golf card big thanks to mumoftwo for the ideas

panavia

Hello. Can I seek some advice, as you all seem to be brilliant at card-making? I am planning to make my own wedding invitations. Up to now, I have only tried fairly basic card-making, just sticking things onto the cards. For the invitations, I want to keep the front of the card plan, with just mine and my boyfriend's initials stamped and then embossed using gold powder and a heat gun. Am I taking on something that is too tricky for a beginner? It sounds fairly easy from the websites I've looked at, but wouldn't mind a professional opinion before I go and buy all of the equipment.

Thanks :-)

Hi
There are websites that will make up a stamp with your own design... you could maybe design your own rubberstamp, and all the invites will then be uniform.
When embossing it will be best to use a FINE DETAIL embossing powder, as you get a much clearer and neater image.

You can also dry emboss some hearts etc on the card, they give a lovely textured feel, and very expensive and classy look to the card.

this is a wedding card I made a few years back , but shows the dry embossing.

thriftymomma

That card is gorgeous Panavia. :-)

Saint_Chris

Right i've been doing cards now for 8 week.
And here are some of mine, i think that i'm quite the same in most of them but here goes.

mumoftwo

Wow Polly1976, your golf card came out super, really lovely, the green strip sets it off nicely.

Panavia that is a gorgeous wedding card. I love making wedding cards and I agree with the dry embossing it is so pretty.

SaintChris: Thanks for showing us your cards, they are really good. I especially love the last one with the navy flowery paper, that is really nice.And it doesn't matter that you stick with similar layouts, if that works for you, brilliant and each one looks individual. And then all of a sudden you think of something else and will try that, like instead covering the bottom half with a nice paper you cover half the card lengthwise. It is really about trying things out and seeing if it looks nice. Yours look great.