Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Hand Made Greeting Cards


I am back after a long time.  Well it is very hot here. Temperatures are 5 to 6 degrees more than the normal temperatures at this time of the year. We have acute water scarcity. If it is like this now, I don't know what will happen as the summer progresses. 

We cannot venture out of our homes until late in the evening. This time it very humid here-first time we are facing this in this area. Even if we stay at home we feel as if we are sitting on a burner. AC and coolers are not able to give us relief. I just hope that my plants survive this ordeal. I also hope that this year the monsoon is on time and that it provides us with plenty of rains. Because for the last two three years the rains were scanty. So this year our water bodies have hit dead storage levels and bore wells are also drying up fast. Even if we want to buy water, the supplies are reducing day by day. W are all keeping our fingers crossed and praying for a miracle.

Well these days I am into paper crafts- making greeting cards. I am not new to this. I used to paint cards using water colours or acrylics. At that time we didn't have so many materials or craft techniques. Craft materials were also very difficult to obtain. Even now buying craft materials is not easy in India in spite of the online sellers.

I am a frugal crafter. I am on a budget and can't spend much on materials or tools. But I am building up on my stash and let us hope I can acquire all the materials and tools slowly one at a time. 

Ok so here is one of my first cards.



I started it with a view to make a paper embroidered card.  I only stuck the pink layer on the base and the sticker in the middle. I wanted to to do some embroidery around the sticker and pricked some holes too. But could not do much as I didn't have proper tools. So I abandoned it for quite some time.

Then one of my friends gifted me a punch set. I did not even open the box for quite a long time. I was busy with my personal life. So one day when I was organising my craft supplies, I saw this card as well as the punch set. I thought I would give it a try.

The base is a baby pink hand made paper thick enough to be used as card stock. The pink layer on top is also a hand made paper (much thinner sheet than the base). The Radha - Krishna is a sticker. Then just for testing, I punched out some flowers and leaves and shaped them and glued it on the card. I wanted to fill the entire card surrounding the sticker with flowers. But though that it would be too loud and cluttered. 

At that time the number of punches I had was limited to the very few in the set. Then again I left it  for quite some time. Recently, I added the Rhine stones (I think that is what the coloured stone like things are called) around the sticker to cover the prick marks and a butterfly. The I covered the pink layer with a paper tape as I didn't like the it was looking.

I am not satisfied with the result but that is all I could do to the old abandoned card. I am just going to keep it as my first card...:)

Now when I look at it, I think I can  do the card differently, if I have to start all over again from the beginning. I now have a little experience with card making.

I was not going to post it here. But then I thought, may be some of my friends out there are such creative people who create such beautiful things, can give me some suggestions or guidance from which i can learn.

So friends, I will be posting my cards here. Please do stop by and leave your comments and suggestions. I have very little experience with card making and I am learning slowly. So your comments and suggestions will help me immensely.

As I said above, I have very limited crafting tolls. I will also be posting about that. I need to build up my tools and craft supplies too.

So keep an eye on my blog.....

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