Fabulous Friday with Kate - All About Cards

Welcome to another Fabulous Friday with Kate!!! !

I have been a card maker for a very long time.  I got my first stamp and ink pad in the second grade so I thought we would make this week all about cards - some basic supply thoughts and a few techniques. 

• 6x6 paper pads are great for card making. You don’t waste paper and it is a great way to see the papers before purchasing a 12x12.

• For me, background stamps are a must in my card making.  I am partial to Impression Obsession & Hero Arts. Sentiment & Image stamps are great also. I tend to go with image stamps that are open to allow for coloring & paper piecing.  Solid images will show off colored ink & are great stamped in the Jenni Bowlin colors. 

• Ribbon is an awesome embellishment for any card as well as brads, flowers, & chipboard.  Using those last few embellishments from your other projects is a great way to embellish your cards and use up your stash.

My favorite and essiential techniques and tricks:

1. create a card front to work on – i cut my card front paper (which can even be computer or inexpensive white cardstock) to 3.75”x5.25” for a kraft 4”x5.5” card.   You can do this with any size card, by making your card front .25 to .5 inches smaller overall than the card you will be mounting to.  That gives you a nice border for your card and will  give you something to work on without worrying about messing up your base card.
2. pop it up – when attaching my card front to card base i like to use pop dots.  Remember, never throw away the sheet of pop dots even if you have used them all.   I save the holey sheet and use that to pop large surfaces.
3. ribbon – when tying a bow around a card, i cut two strips of ribbon and secure them to the card front with staples, this saves some ribbon and grounds the ribbon nicely to help you tie it.   When you staple the ribbon to the back of the card front and then bring the ribbon around the front to tie it, you cover the staples.

Here are some examples of cards and the supplies used to make them!

All three cards use the same background stamp, but just by changing the ribbon, position and color, I have created three unique cards.

 Impression Obsession: woodgrain stamp
Jenni Bowlin: fountain pen and chicken feed ink pads
May Arts: striped twill ribbon in black and mesh ribbon in orange in black
Hero Arts: Happy Halloween
Jillibean Soup: 12x12 stirred elements
Recollections: black flower
Paper Studio: Halloween brads

I put together a little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmD4wuyxH1o

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Fabulous Fridays with Kate and I hope to see you back here next week.