A no-frills, non -floral card design: Clean & Simple Cardmaking Tutorial | Easy Handmade Card Idea

 

In this Clean and Simple (CAS) cardmaking tutorial, I share a fun geometric card design suitable for anyone who is a no-frills type of person. Yes, cardmaking does include many floral designs, but that is not all we can make.

If you want to make your card along with me, watch my You Tube video, complete with a blooper right at the end! 👉 The blooper shows up around the 27-minute mark, so you can either craft along with me as I stamp and assemble my card or skip ahead for a laugh. If you enjoy DIY cardmaking, stamping, or beginner-friendly handmade card tutorials, this video is for you! Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to help my channel grow—I’d love to connect with fellow crafters.

Supplies

• 
• Altenew's Doodled Triangles Stamp set
• Altenew's pigment ink in Permanent Black
• Fresh dye in in Aqualicious, Warm Sunshine, Frayed Leaf, Sweet Leaf, Limestone
• Altenew white card stock

1. First you are going to cut and fold your white card stock into a fold-open A2 (4.25"X5.5') card.
2. Observe the design in the picture and begin stamping. Some elements should be stamped first and you will need to make a mask (as easy as a scrap piece of card stock) so that some elements look further back. It may be helpful to watch my video if you have any question as how to do this.
3. Lastly, stamp the sentiment.

And there you have it.  A CAS (clean and simple) design that relys on geometric shapes for pattern instead of florals and embellishments. Who says card making is just for frilly women!

Clean & Simple Cardmaking Tutorial + Funny Blooper | Easy Handmade Card ...

#Ever messed up your handmade card at the very last step? 🙈 You’re not alone! In this Clean and Simple (CAS) cardmaking tutorial, I share a fun geometric card design—and yes, you’ll see my real-life crafting blooper happen right on camera. 👉 The blooper shows up around the 27-minute mark, so you can either craft along with me as I stamp and assemble my card or skip ahead for a laugh. If you enjoy DIY cardmaking, stamping, or beginner-friendly handmade card tutorials, this video is for you! Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe to help my channel grow—I’d love to connect with fellow crafters. 💬 Are you a cardmaker too? Share what you’re working on in the comments—I’d love to see your creations!

Beginner card making mistakes

I achingly remember the crisp autumn colors of Fall in Louisville (my home town). Living in San Francisco for 13 years and now South Florida since 2000; I have long missed that foilage. As well as bonfires, frosty breath and well worn boots. That was my favorite season.

So, I was eager to use my leaves cover die. I have several leaf themed dies. It's only natural as I am such a tree lover.

I conjured up the feeling of dry, jewel toned leaves by preparing card stock ahead of time. The night before, I sprayed them with vibrant Fall pigments by Lindy's Gang. This paper would be for the central two leaves on my cover. For a video on this whole process, check out my video here.

I also painted swathes of Autumn colored Dylusian paints onto another card stock sheet. My thinking was that the Dylusian colors would shine through the die cut windows around the perimeter of my card front.

 Then, I individually tiled the leave's tiny components into the two central leaf windows. I  thought the central hand tiled leaves would stand out more vibrant and be the clear focal point. That was not the case. Got to hand it to Dyan Reaveley. Her Dyslusian paints are so pigmented that their painted background colors rival the three dimensional glued on leaf tiles! If I were to make another one of these cards, I would make the differences more apparent. Perhaps with more differing colors or amping up the three dimensionality of the central leaves.

Another surprise I did not foresee was the fact that the "Shine" sentiment, although embossed and die cut, does not stand out enough. I would have done better to cut it from a dark, solid colored cardstock, without shimmer. It competes too much with the intricacy of the leaf cuts and marbleized colors.

I spent some time preparing the under papers and individually gluing on leaf tiles with tweezers. So, I will remember this constructive critique. I am sharing these mistakes with you I because that is how we learn.

Supplies

• Altenew's Striped Leaf Cover Die
• Altenew's Shine Die Set
• Altenew's white and Sunkissed card stock
• Altenew glue tape
• Altenew's tweezer
• Embossing ink
• Embossing powder
• Heat. tool
• Dylusian paints
• Lindy's autumn pigment sprays
• Yellow ochre acrylic paint

1. Spray Lindy's Gang shimmer paints over a white piece of cardstock. Let dry couple hours.
2. Paint a white piece of card stock in random swirls and patches of Dylusian paints. Let dry half hour. Dylusian paints dry very quickly. (One reason they are great for art journals.).
   
3. Cut and fold your A2 blank white card.
4. Cut a 4.25"X5.5" piece of sunkissed card stock.
5. Run the sunkissed piece of card stock through die cutting machine with the striped leaf cover die.
6. Cut the Dylusian painted paper into a 4.25"X5.5" rectangle.
7. Glue the Dylusian painted paper onto the front of your blank card.
8. Then glue the die cut sunkissed paper onto the dylusian painted cover. This creates a lovely Autumn leaf background.
9. Measure the two central leaf designs of the cover art and cut that out of the Lindy's sprayed card stock.
10. Tape that over the central two leaf cut-outs of the cover die and run through die cutting machine.
11. Very methodically, remove die cut pieces and reassemble with glue and tweezers onto the central two leaf cut outs on the card front. 
12.  Stamp white cardstock with embossing ink.
13. Sprinkle metallic bronze embossing powder and melt it by heating it with your heat tool. Be careful not to linger in any one spot for more than a few seconds. Keep your heat tool approximately four inches from the card stock and keep it moving slowly over the surface until it is all melted (shiny).
14. Cut out the Shine sentiment with your die and die cutting machine onto your embossed paper.
15. Glue the Shine sentiment to the cover of your card.

There you have it. I may remake the card. Or I will just learn from the experience. I hope these tips are also helpful to you. Have you made any cards that surprised you by teaching you a lesson?

Beginner friendly ideas with a stencil

This sweet lil' card is one I would send to book lovers or journalers, etc. The card itself includes the black border. I chose the black border and central image for novelty; but I also saw that stenciling a lavender color over a yellow ombre background produced a sort or lavender/gray. And gray tone lent itself more to black. 

Below, you can clearly see the subtle color shifts from light yellow to orange. This was achieved by inking my card with four different shades in the same color family - from lightest to darkest. You can also see how crisp my white ink looks with the help of Altenew's Stampwheel 2.0 (for a You Tube review of the Stampwheel as well as an explanation of how I stenciled this card, see my video here.)

Supplies

• Altenew Journal Flowers stamp and die set
• Altenew Square Weave stencil
• Altenew pigment inks in Permanent Black and Antique Gold and Cloud White
• Altenew fresh dye ink mini set Golden Sunset
• Altenew glue
• blending tool
• Black and white cardstock
• Die cutting machine

1. First, cut A2 sizes (4.25"X5.5") of black and white cardstock. This is in addition to your blank A2 folded paper for the card base. 
   
   
   
2. Select the four colors of ink and gently use your blending tool to make four bands of color. I chose an ombre gradation. Ink slowly as you want the colors to seamlessly blend into each other.
3. Stamp the book image in white ink onto your black cardstock. Ink the hearts with your gold ink.
4. Use your die cutting machine to cut out the book and hearts.
5. Center the stenciled background and book image and glue down. Glue on the hearts.

This background stencil can be used in a variety of ways. With my first Halloween card of 2025, I texturized the card, creating a literally tangible weave. Instead of inking the ombre background first and then stenciling, I reversed the order. 

First I applied a texture paste by spreading it in a thin, flat coat over the stencil. Then, I let that dry overnight. Then I inked the card. I ratcheted up the spooky drama with black cut outs and a glitter moon and ghoulish critters.

Stay tuned, for more ideas on how to use your staple art supplies in clever ways.

CAS card - letterpress at home

 Have you ever received a fancy card with letterpress type?

With letterpress, the paper is textured and you can literally see the printing process. It denotes an important and special feel to the card. Letterpress is officially done at a printers; but I have a trick to make a faux letterpress card. 

This trick is actually multi-step, requiring agile fingers and patience. I will show you a tip to make it go smoother. It took me several tries to figure it out but I am happy to pass it along. But first:

 Supplies

• White cardstock
• Altenew Butterfly Dreams layering stamp set
• Altenew Fancy Hello Die
• Altenew fresh dye ink sets in Golden Sunset and Sweet Dreams
• Die cutting machine
• Spray adhesive
• Vellum

1. The first thing you will do is die cut five fancy hellos from card stock.
2. Then you glue each fancy hello on top of each other, making one thick fancy hello. For me, this was harder than it sounds. I have neuropathy in my non dominant hand and this creates numb fingertips and lack of dexterity in that hand. Usually it does not interfere with my art, but this stacking of such delicate die cuts was frustrating. Until I figured out a way to make it easier. Take two sewing needles and stick 
   
   them into something softly solid. Then line up the die cuts using the needles as guides (see photo). Letting the die cuts fall onto the other dies, with the two needles holding them still, allows you to fuss and get them exactly lined up. Voila! I got this idea after many failed attempts of glueing 5 hellos onto each other and then printing (step 5) with them. Since those were not lined up as well, they created a fuzzy mess of a hello on my card. 
3. Die cut a fancy hello out of vellum and stick that to the bottom of your five glued-together hellos. So, now it is six layers, and the bottom layer is ink resistant.
4. Ink the bottom of the hello (onto vellum side) and then carefully situate onto the card where you want it to rest. 
5. Now run that through your die cutting machine (you will probably have to fuss with the number of layers of plates you put on the stack). Your card is now imprinted with the fancy hello and it is pressed into the paper making an indent in the paper. Faux letterpress.
6. Now the fun part - stamping and playing with colors. Using my Butterfly Dreams layering stamp set, I stamped three butterflies. I used the two sets of mini cubes in yellows and teals. You know I could not resist and several times combined more than one color in inking the same stamp. 
7. With my butterflies flying happily, I used those same ink cubes to make irregular splatters of color on the card front. To do this, I pressed a brush onto an ink cube. I transferred the color to a palette. Then I sprayed water onto the ink and made the ink watery; so I could pick it up it with my brush and splatter the watery ink onto my card.

I like the look of this card, I am glad to know this technique. Stay tuned and I will show you other card making techniques that create interesting textures as well. Happy stamping.

Common mistakes

 

I thought I would show you some common mistakes that can happen when you make cards. 

Both my ladies' features sported ink that ran: my brunettes brown tears coming down and hijab wearing friend, whose lips also dripped rosy ink. I believe I had too much ink on my stamp, and thus when I pressed it, it squished out of the prescribed lines.

The mistake on my brunette in the bottom left photo is for other card makers that are messy like me. I constantly smudge paint and ink. I've always been a little messy gal, and I still struggle with that; and here I smudged her hair.

The last image on the lower right is a common mistake. If you do not have something like the stamp wheel 2.0 or other stamping alignment aids, you will notice that the lines on the left side of my brunette did not stamp completely. It is almost impossible to line up a stamp to land exactly where the first stamp landed unless you use a tool that's meant to help you with alignment. I bought the stamp wheel 2.0 and used that; but I was still getting the hang of it. No doubt, in the future, this will be a thing in the past for me.

I hope it helps you to see some common mistakes for beginners. Another mistake I had was with the textured background. I had painted my first embossed card front by hand with watercolor. Unfortunately, I had not waited for my first wash of color to dry thoroughly before I tried to add small accents. And they bled all over the page; again I am a messy gal!

So don't feel bad. Any skill takes a while to get the hang of. Just know that you'll have lots of scrap paper when you start making cards.