Before you can get started on making your first greetings card you will need a few basic tools and some materials to work with. Let us have a look now at the basic tools.

Pic1 Basic Tools

Pic1 above shows the basic tools you will need to get you started. Let us go over them.
A Cutting Board is essential to prevent cutting and scratching your desk/worktop. We have an all glass-topped workstation but still use a Cutting Board to prevent damage. Shown here is an X-Cut board available on line and at most good craft shops. However, a piece of board or an old tablemat would suffice.

A general pair of scissors. We bought a pack of three in our local supermarket for just £1.99p.
You will also need a pair of small Detail Scissors and a Craft Knife for cutting out small items. Available for around the £2/3 pound mark from craft shops or online.

Double sided sticky tape and self adhesive foam mounting pads are yet again easily and cheaply found along with a tube of Gel Glue from stationers, local supermarkets, craft shops and of course online.

A Scoring Board and Tool is a necessary item. It might be easy to fold an A4 sheet of paper in half but difficult with a sheet of card. The Cost? Around £8 upwards, but well worth it in terms of ease, speed and ruined card.

Well that's all the basic tools required, let's look at the materials you will need.

 

Pic2 Materials

As you can see in Pic2 above there is very little required in the way of card making materials. You will require some A4 sheets of coloured 300gm card for the outer side of your card and some A4 sheets of at least 120gm premium inkjet paper for the insert. Don't bother trying to use 80gm photocopy paper, the ink soaks through and spoils all your hard work.

Packs of A4 300gm coloured card can be easily purchased from most large supermarkets. Shop where you find a good deal. We buy our coloured card in bulk but a pack of 10 assorted sheets cost just a few pounds in the supermarket. Especially when there is a "buy one get one free" offer.

Decoupage can be purchased in pre-cut sheets, you just press them out and stick 'em on! That we feel takes all the fun out of card making. There are hundreds of web sites that offer designs for every occasion imaginable, all downloadable free. The only condition applied is that the images are not sold. In other words, they are to be used for your own use only. You can print your decoupage onto white card but a better effect is achieved by printing it onto 210gm heavy gloss photographic inkjet paper. Don't try to print your decoupage onto lightweight paper, it won't work.

 

Pic3 this is the card we are going to make.
We will now show you in easy photographic steps how to make this attractive A5 card.

Pic4 Scoring the card.
Place the A4 sheet of card on the scoring board and locate the A4 centre creasing mark. Using the scoring tool, score the card on the inside surface.

Pic5 Creasing the card.
Make sure that you have scored the card deep enough to make a nice crease to make it fold in half nicely.

Pic6 Folding the card.
Your A4 sheet of coloured card is now folded in half to form an A5 size card. It can be placed aside for a while we make the insert.

Pic7 the insert.

We have chosen for this tutorial a rather basic insert design. This is where YOU come in. The verse used here is a rather standard text downloaded from the Internet. You can write your own and make your card personal. We just included a piece of flower clip-art too. Again, YOU add exactly what you want here.

We done this using Microsoft Picture It Publishing 2001, but identical results can be obtained using Microsoft Word. Just remember to change the page layout from Portrait to Landscape before you start. Once completed and printed, fold in half using your scoring board. Place the insert to one side for a while. We will return to it later.

Pic8 sheet of decoupage.
What we are going to do now is to bring your card to life. We will now cut out the decoupage and mount it.

Pic9 cutting the decoupage.
This is where those Detail Scissors come in handy. Take your time cutting out. The more accurate your cutting the more professional will be the result.

Pic10 all cut and numbered in order of assembly.
You have now cut out all the pieces and numbered them so you can build up the 3D image. Let us start.

Pic11 the first piece.
This we will mount in the centre on the front of the outside of our card using foam pads.

Pic12 placing the pads.

Turn the first piece of decoupage over and place as shown above a number of the self-adhesive foam pads. (We coloured in our pads to make them visible in the photograph.) Mount the first piece of your decoupage on the front of your card. Then continue with the rest of the pieces, building up a 3D stack image.

Care is required here to align each piece of the image accurately. Until you gain the skills to do this, there is another way. Instead of using foam pads, you can use small blobs of Gel Glue. Gel Glue allows you to be able to "slide" the piece slightly to allow accurate positioning. However, you do not obtain such as good 3D effect as you would if using foam pads. It is also a lot slower method, as you need to allow the Gel Glue to dry on each piece before placing the next. If you decide to use the Gel Glue method, it would be a good idea to let it dry out overnight before proceeding

Nearly done, and by now you can see your creation taking shape. Let us move back to the insert.

Pic13 mounting the insert.

After you have folded the inset to make an A5 size, it is advisable to trim a small amount off the three open sides of the inset this will just make it a little smaller than your card giving a slightly nicer effect.

With your verse now inside your insert and folded, lay your insert down with the left hand side facing you and as above put a straight line of double sided tape. Line up your insert inside your card with your taped part up and the other side of the insert down on the back of your card. Remove the tape covering and fold the top half of your card firmly down this will then enable you to open the card and insert together.

Pic14 insert in place.

Your card is now complete. However, if you care to scroll back to Pic3 you will see that we added a few embellishments, paper lace tape and a Happy Birthday logo cut with "deckle" scissors. This we will feature in further articles on Advanced Card making. Until then enjoy card making and experiment with design, colours and layout.

HEALTH AND SAFETY WARNING.

Card making requires the use of sharp instruments. Scissors and Craft Knifes can cause injury if care is not taken with use. We use a Silicone free Gel Glue. Make sure that you understand the risks involved if your glue contains Silicone. Finally, keep all sharp instruments and adhesives away from small children.