This has happened to me for several years. A friend asks me to sell her my handmade greeting cards and every year I say I don’t have any extras.
You would think the best course of action would be to make extras.
She said she needed six and had no time to make her own, to say nothing of the fact she didn’t have the talent or any of the fancy tools that I have to make them.
Mind you, I don’t really have that many tools, unless you ask my other half – he has no idea how much more I would like to have.
I asked if she would have an hour or so to spare that evening so she would be able to make her cards.
I am going to tell you what I told her, that it should not take more than 10 minutes per card.
Six cards equals about one hour.
Here is the list of items she needed:
Two of the same greeting, birthday, Mother’s Day or Christmas card – I told her to look for a card with simple graphics such as, a decorated tree or bundle of flowers.
The first thing she said was she didn’t want store bought, she wanted handmade. I said they will be handmade.
I start out with a piece of paper and stamp a design on it, cards are a piece of paper with a design stamped on it and already coloured.
I asked if she knew what paper tole was. She said it was layering parts of a picture on top of each other to give a three-dimensional effect. She was bang on.
I told her that some of the pictures or cards are made with up to eight layers. It depended on the detail in the picture and that was what she was going to do with her cards.
Then she was excited.
Next she needed double-sided foam tape. It can be found in the craft section and you need scissors.
Decide what you are going to layer and cut that out of one card.
Cut a piece of foam small enough so that it won’t be seen, peel and stick to the back of the top layer, carefully place on the base card.
You may find that you want to do more layers and may need to purchase three or more cards depending on your project.
This art form has been around for many years. If you have access to a library on the Internet check it out.
– Darlainea Redlack is circulation co-ordinator for the Grand Forks Gazette