By Card Making & Scrapbooking Contributor
Peg Rounds
Q: I’m a beginner card maker and need suggestions on where to start with my new hobby.
A: There are 3 important things to keep in mind when deciding the details of a card: Is the card for a female or male to help decide such things as what pattern paper you will use, the theme of the occasion to help coordinate stamps and embellishments to it and the age of the receiver.
Q: How do I make things look distressed?
A: A distressing tool, the blade of a pair of scissors for the edges or sandpaper are helpful to distress edges.
Q: The design on my patterned papers don’t look good when I stack them on top of each other. What should I do?
A: Break the patterns up by adding a solid card stock in between each layer of patterned paper.
Q: Should I buy an electric die cut machine or a manual one?
A: It is a matter of preference. Each has a place in crafting. The is a list of consumables or things that will have to be repurchased in order to keep using whichever machine you choose. Mats and blades will need to be replaced when using an electronic machine and you will need to make additional purchases of cartridges to cut from. Plates (Cuttlebug plates) need to be replaced for manual ones and you will also need to purchase dies and embossing folders for them. You will also want to consider such things as the prices for the machines and extra items, storage space, what you will be using it for and even how often it will be used.
Q: Besides painting, what can I use a stencil for?
A: They can be run through a manual die cut machine to emboss the image into the paper. You can place double sided tape onto your project and place the stencil on top of it and then sprinkle glitter over it to create your own design. Spray Ink or ink pads and ink daubers can be used to color in the pattern. Use DecoArt Dimensional Effects Texture Paste to add dimension to your project and for even more eye catching fun the texture paste can be tinted to bring out the details of the stencil.
