How to Embellish Homemade Greeting Cards

Making your own greeting cards is a creative, economical and easy way to personalize each one to suit its recipient. Embellish the homemade projects with a variety of accents, colors and textures to create looks ranging from whimsical and cute to formal and beautiful.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Blank cards
• Stickers or die cuts
• Dimensional accents
• Glitter or beads
• Adhesives
• Acrylic paint or chalk
• Ribbon
• Rubber stamps
• Ink pads

1. Stamp an image in the center, on one corner or multiple times to create a patterned background. If you don't have a rubber stamp, use bubble wrap, leaves, a sponge cut into a shape, your fingertips or a pencil eraser to generate a design or pattern.

2. Support the theme of your project with appropriate stickers, die cuts or images trimmed from recycled greeting cards. Embellish a birthday card by making a sticker scene featuring a cake, candles, presents and confetti, for example.

3. Create eye-catching texture with dimensional accents. If you're designing a baby shower card, for instance, cover the background with pieces of soft fabric, cluster buttons or charms at one corner or adhere a line of paper flowers as a border.

4. Add bling with glitter or microbeads. Apply a thin layer of liquid adhesive or double-stick tape to the sections you'd like to cover and then sprinkle with fine glitter, shiny microbeads or colorful seed beads. Press them in and tap to remove the excess.

5. Boost the color by dry brushing edges or backgrounds with acrylic paint or swirling on a layer of craft chalk. In addition, use the mediums to alter stickers or highlight plain die cuts or stamped images.

6. Use ribbon as a finishing touch. Knot short snippets along one side, weave a piece through notches created with scissors or use longer lengths to tie the entire card shut.

Tips & Warnings

• Avoid getting cards returned for insufficient postage by consulting your local post office for size, mailing and postage guidelines.