World Card Making Day!

 

Happy World Card Making Day! Yep it's a whole day dedicated to card making :) My kind of day for sure! Today I thought I'd share a card sketch of mine that I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE. As regular blog readers will know I have been making cards for around 5 years now and one of my favorite things to use for cards is scraps. Be it scrapbooking layout leftovers, gift wrap, reusing old cards, or some other pretty paper I see I just like to reuse, it's environmentally friendly and economical! That's why I LOVE this design:

All you need are strips of paper to make it work, place on solid background add a sentiment strip and VOILA! Super easy and great for beginner cardmakers and kids! Like I mentioned above I love saving strips from scrapbook layouts for these kinds of cards because those little 1" strips are all you need for making a card design like this.On the card below I used leftover scraps of paper from a CTMH calendar set.

The beauty of this design is it works for all card sizes and orientations. Below I used the design on a same size card but portrait rather than landscape format.

Now I know some may be thinking "how to get white text on a black background?" and I'll explain that next. As I use this design a lot for using up scraps of paper what I did was to design a sheet of sentiments with black strip and white text. I have this as a JPG and Photoshop file so I can change the color or font. All I have to do is print out onto a sheet of cardstock, trim and add to the card :) Simples!

**Would anyone be interested in a free download of this sheet? Let me know and I'll pop it into a future blog post!**

Aside from being quick and easy the black background works because it ties in nicely with the black inked edges of the papers. I do this to unite different papers and also to give the card a little depth and texture. I personally think the scraps of paper look a little 'flat' when just layered un-inked. The great thing about inking is it ties together different colors and designs of paper so you can mix and match, just like the cards below.

Another thing about this sketch is it's versatility. The background could be ANY color but works just as well nice and simple with white, which can make this a very cheap and efficient card to produce! This makes it especially suitable for kids krafts! Imagine the next crafting party with all the strips pre-cut and pre-inked, all the card bases done, and the sentiment strips cut to size! Just lay them out into piles and let the kids have it with some kid friendly adhesive!

Speaking of versatility looking a the green and red in the two cards above this would make some fun holiday cards! Reuse the gift wrap and gift bags from those holiday gifts and remake them into cards! Hmmm maybe that will be my project for today!

Enjoy the sketch! Don't forget to leave me a comment and if you make a card with the sketch leave me a link so I can come check out your creations!

Di