Six Easy Designs for Handmade Cards

It’s been a lot of years since I bought a card from the store. This might have something to do with the fact that I have enough card-making supplies stashed to build a small village out of cardstock and then fuel said village indefinitely using solely scrapbook paper.

One thing that sometimes gets me stuck, though, is deciding on a good layout for any given card. So as I was making a birthday card for my mother-in-law, I thought that I’d put together a little post on easy designs for handmade cards, just in case any of you want to make your own (perhaps for Mother’s Day? Father’s Day? Flag Day? My birthday is coming up in June…) but aren’t sure where to start.

Bonus tip before we begin: The key to any handmade card is layers. It’s sort of like putting together an outfit: everything that is added to the base via accessories or pattern only adds character and dimension and interest. (Within reason, of course. There is such a thing as too much bling. And too much mullet. Okay, so not everything you can add is helpful.)

Anyway, the birthday card I made for my mother-in-law has five total layers: the black card base, the polka dot paper, the ribbon, the aqua paper, and then the text. I guess you could count as a sixth layer the red dots that I added with marker.

With that in mind, here are six easy layouts (with multiple layers illustrated) for making your own handmade cards. They are so easy your dog could make them. So easy your husband could make them. (Okay, let’s not push it. Hi Rick.) ;)

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Layout #1: A basic layout with predictable centered alignment. Keeping the sentiment and ribbon in the upper half divides the overall space in a less-uniform way.

Layout #2: Same as layout #1…but with the focus shifted slyly to the bottom half of the card instead of the top.

Layout #3: This one shifts to landscape. The ribbon divides the bottom half of the card and placing the sentiment to the right instead of the center makes the overall design look neat but not too contrived. 

Layout #4: Here we get wild and crazy and use not one, but two ribbons. The two ribbons add a bit more visual interest since everything is in the smack center of the card.

Layout #5: Two ribbons again, but here the sentiment and ribbons are shifted to the right half to divide the space in a more unpredictable way.

Layout #6: In more wild and crazy news, here the ribbon has the audacity to hang off the page and not even be cut in a straight line. The nerve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Of course these are just six of the many possibilities, and the sizes and shapes used in each can be adjusted for even more variation. And adding a blinged-out mullet would be a variation, too. Perhaps when celebrating National Mullet Awareness Day.

Are you a handmade card person, or do you prefer to buy? Will you ever attempt a handmade card? If we pooled our card-making resources, could be build a small country instead of just a village? Now accepting recommendations for the name of said village.

Linking up to Tater Tots & Jello!