How to make your personalized greeting card

Every year this month, I make a special card for my husband's birthday. Working on new ideas and techniques has always been fun. Often it is a theme based card but this time I thought, why not do a versatile card and share it with all of you. So here it is, a hand-made card for all occasions. All you would need is - paper stock, felt cloth, some pearls and paints.

This card has 3 components. If you are short on time and still want to do it, just make those flowers and assemble on a coloured card stock and you are done. You can use any one component too, to make an entire card. Follow the pictures below and get going with your very own hand-made greeting.

Materials required
(In case you don't have felt cloth, any other fabric will do to - printed cotton, satin fabric, etc)

Stencil Cutting :

The white card stock used is 15'' x 10'' and the blue one is 7'' x 9.5''. Hand-made paper can be used instead of card stock. I have created my own leaf stencil as you can see below. These stencils are available at craft stores too (In India finding them would be quite difficult, but you can always create your own just like I did).

To make your own stencil just get the right size of paper, the design you want and a good stencil cutter. The most important part of stencil cutting is planning your design and paper dimensions, in advance. Once you begin to cut and realize that the dimensions are wrong or that your design is not correctly placed, there would be no other way than to begin all over again. 

The design below is pretty simple. Cut out a leaf template, as shown in the top middle picture. This would ensure that all your leaf cut-outs are same. Next up, draw your design at the back of the sheet, to keep things neat. When drawing at the back, remember the mirror image concept. The design as it would appear, would be a reverse image of the original so plan accordingly. Once you have your design just place your work on a rough surface and begin cutting. Be careful since this will be a sharp knife. Also mark the portions that need to be cut out with a cross to avoid any mistakes.

Use your leaf cutouts for another project

I have made three types of flowers here. Begin by making your own template. Following are my template dimensions (you can always create your own) :

Template dimensions :

Pattern-1: 8cm diameter 

Pattern-2: 7cm & 5.5 cm diameters. (Divide the circumference in 5 equal parts roughly and draw the pattern for both the sizes)

Pattern-3: 3cm  x 2 cm x  0.75cm & 2.5cm x 2cm x 0.5cm (Outer length (one side) x inner length(one side) x breadth)

Follow the pictures for each pattern and you will get beautiful results. For the centre I have used pearls strung together and a ball of red felt fabric. You can have a choice of wooden buttons, coloured pearls or any other embellishments to go along.

Pattern-1

Pattern-2

Pattern-3

The third part is beautifying the inside of the card. I used one of the flower templates above, cut a hole in the middle of it and did some spray painting. Use regular water colours and a tooth brush. Spread out lots of newspaper before you begin. Always do a test patch, since this is your final work. Lastly, if your card stock is lighter in colour, as mine was, be a little cautious in handling and painting it.

Once the insides are dry, stick the stencil onto the main card stock and assemble all the flowers on the stencil and we are good to go.

The last step would be the message on the cover of the card. I did a simple hand-lettered 'happy birthday' message with twigs of leaf. Use a pencil to write your message and then use a script brush to go over the pencil lettering with paints. If you have metallic marker-pens you can use those too.

Give these hand-made pretty nothings to your loved ones who are sure to adore these beautiful creations.

Hope you have fun crafting your own.

Let me know how well your own personalized greeting went. Share your ideas and queries.

Happy crafting till then.

P.S : Follow the blog for upcoming festival craft, since Diwali is round the corner.