How to Make Greeting Cards With Ephemera and Antique Buttons

Handmade greeting card with old photo and buttons

Using ephemera (paper items that were meant to be thrown away after their initial use but are now collectible), vintage buttons and other bits and bobs, you can make your own greeting cards. You can make these cards so fancy that you can frame and display them if you decide they're too pretty to give away. Follow some general instructions to learn the art of card making. But don't limit yourself---be creative.

Things You'll Need

• Heavy cardstock blank cards
• Hot glue gun and glue sticks
• Regular white glue
• Vintage or new lace and doilies
• Lace glue
• Small vintage or antique mother-of-pearl and fancy plastic buttons
• Old jewelry, such as faux pearls and small rhinestone parts
• Dried roses or small fabric flowers
• Poems from old books with yellowed and weathered pages
• Victorian calling cards and trade cards, postcards, photos, letters and so on
• Tiny wooden spools from the craft store
• Embroidery thread
• Any other interesting vintage or antique bits and bobs

Instructions

Steps to Making Handmade Greeting Cards

1. 

   Buy the new items at the craft store. For the vintage and antique items, go to antique stores, eBay, garage sales, thrift stores, estate sales, auctions---or your own attic.

2. 

   Sort through your ephemera, buttons, objects and other items; find the ones you think you want to use; and lay them out in the way that you envision them on the card so you can see how the finished card will look. If you are planning to use lace, you should lay it on the card first, because you will layer all other items on top of it.

3. 

   Apply the lace glue around the borders of the area where you plan to put your lace and in enough other spots (you can draw an X) to anchor the lace. Use the lace to cover the whole card or use it on either the right- or left-hand border of the card.

4. 

   Attach a partial strand of faux pearls, if you have them, by using the glue gun along the right-hand border of the card and placing them in the glue trail---quickly before it dries. If you have a smaller, lighter strand of faux pearls, you can loop them and glue them in an interesting pattern anywhere on the card. You can mix smaller pieces of jewelry, such as rhinestone clasps from old necklaces, with the buttons.

5. 

   Decide where to place the focal point of your card, whether it is an old photo, calling card or some other paper item. If the item is heavy---such as a CDV photo mounted on cardboard---use the hot glue; otherwise, use the white or lace glue.

6. Find a verse, if you want one, from an old book of poetry (the more battered the better) and remove it from the book. Use your fingers to "trim" it. Don't use scissors---you want the paper to have ragged edges. Glue it down with white or lace glue.

7. Take a little wooden spool and wrap embroidery thread in the color of your choice around it. (You can thread it through the buttons if you like.) Group it with the buttons, flowers, jewelry parts and any other small items. Use the hot glue to glue them down, usually in an upper or lower corner of the card. You can also "anchor" your focal point by gluing buttons to some of the corners of your paper item. Another idea is to do two groupings, for instance, one grouping in the upper-left corner and one in the lower-right corner.

References

• Definition of Ephemera

Resources

• Vintage Buttons
• Ephemera Society of America