Welcome to Busy Bee's Handmade Card Making Tips

Without doubt the best card making tips you'll find online!

Check that your card is going to fit in the envelope before you get carried away with a 3D design. Especially decoupage cards as they will need a bigger envelope than the one designed for the original card size.

Not all colours of envelopes can be sent in the post. Bright and funky colours are great, but do check before your are sent packing from the post office for an envelope that looks like an explosion in a paint factory.

Check out your local pound store for handy items for cardmaking, for example, a feather duster can be much cheaper than buying feathers in packs and a scrubbing brush bristles can make great cat or dog whiskers. Go take a look and you'll be suprised what you find and get ideas from.

Stamping / Heat Embossing
When heat embossing always dust over your cardstock with talcum powder before applying the stamp, it helps to stop little specs on the rest of the card, by removing the static.

Iris Folding
Use florist ribbon instead of paper, which can be picked up from most florist shops for about 20p per metre. It can be torn in half before folding it to get 2 metres out of every metre you buy and gives a really nice satin finish

Take long strips of paper with you on train, plane and car journeys to fold, this saves lots of time when you are making a card, and makes use of your dead time while travelling

Chalks
You can use old eyeshadows, blushers and powder make up products as an alternative to chalks, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll have stacks squirreled away!

Saving money on your craft supply’s
To save money on backing paper for your cards, use old wrapping paper, or which can be bought in rolls from most pound shops, stick with double sided sellotape rather than glue, to keep a flat finish!

Store your stamping inkpads upside down when they are nearly run out, so the ink runs to the top of the stamp ensuring you get the most amount of use out!

If you just feel like making cards, make blank ones, you can always add peel off messages later, this also works well for making a card you forgot!  Just add words!

Use a clear nail polish or glue on the ends of ribbons so they don’t fray

Don’t throw anything paper away, keep an old paper box in your craft area, and add bits to it as you have finished with them, they always come in handy for later projects, if you have a die cutter, you can use the scraps for die cuts, and use them for punching, matting, or layering or for making collages with the kids on rainy days!

Most DIY stores have a nice range of textured backing paper that they call free wallpaper samples!

Bee xx