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!

Using inkpads for watercolor: a sweet nostalgic floral card

 

A favorite past time for adults to relax with is coloring. In this tutorial, I will show you how to use your stamping ink pad to paint watercolor on your cards. And it is just like coloring in that you can easily brush on washes of color with three simple tools - a paintbrush, a paper towel and water. If you would like to see the accompanying video on how to achieve this look, click here. 

Supplies

• Altenew's Nostalgic Florals stamp  and die set
• White and light orange card stock
• Altenew's Satin Gold Sequins
• Altenew's Summer Afternoon fresh dye ink mini set
• Altenew's Coffee Break fresh dye ink mini set
• Altenew's Fresh Dye Ink in Grass Field 
  
  
  
• Altenew's Crisp Inks in Parrot
• Altenew's gluetape
• Liquid glue
• Altenew's watercolor brush
• Paper towels
• Water spritzer

1. Stamp a 4"X5.25" card stock rectangle with your flower image and sentiment.
2. Cut a 4.25"X5.5" yellow card stockout rectangle.
3. Glue the yellow card stock to the front of your A2 size folded white blank card.
4. On a slick paint proof surface (like most craft mats or palette), smudge the ink face of your stamping ink onto your "palette" to deposit ink. 
5. Moisten your brush tip and the deposited ink with your water spritzer.
6. Use your brush to mop up the ink and start painting. Play around with different quantities of paint on your brush tip and pressure to get different results. Also, the more you spray water onto your ink, the more subtle the shade.
7. Use the corresponding die for your main image and cut that out of card stock. You will be using this cut out as a mask, so you will want to save it with your stamp and die set. If you need to know what a card maker's "mask" is, check out my previous blog post here. 
8. Place your mask over your main image. Since you will not be blending ink over the mask's edges, you can simply lay the mask over your image. 
9. Wet the brush bristles and pick up a healthy amount of the water spritzed ink from your palette.
10. Hold your brush horizontally over your image and tap the barrel of your brush so that ink drops fall onto the card front.

Using masks in your card making

 

While those of us who love, love, love Halloween are already crafting cards for our holiday, my topic of masks today does not refer to those kinds of masks we hide behind at Halloween. I am talking about masks in card making, which conceal a portion of your card so that ink or blending done over that area does not take to the portion covered. This creates depth and a natural look to your composition. 

When crafting a mask, you can use specialty masking paper, masking fluid or even a stencil. But I chose to simply stamp and cut out the image I wanted to cover from a post-it. Here, you can see I stamped a monstera leaf, then I stamped and cut out the same image  from a post-it and placed that post-it over my initially stamped image. My next stamped image will overlap the first one and appear partially hidden, under the first stamped image.  

Now, do not be scared by my supplies list. I used quite a bit for this card, mainly different inks. You can streamline the colors used; I just love to layer different colors on top of each other.

Supplies

• Altenew's white cardstock
• Altenew's Craft Your Life Tropical Vibes project kit
• Die cutting/embossing machine
• Maker's Movement Eres Majia stamp and die set
• Altenew's fresh dye ink mini sets in Golden Sunset, Enchanted Garden and Red Cosmos
• Altenew's fresh dye inks in Evergreen and Olive
• Altenew's pigment ink in Antique Gold and Permanent Black
• Altenew's mini blending brushes
• Embossing ink
• Bronze embossing powder
• Heating tool
• Glue and Altenew's Ultra Sticky Double Sided Tape
• Altenew's Fine Blade Scissors
• Gold marker

1. Cut and fold an A2 (4.25"X5.5") card out of your white cardstock. Also, cut a 3.75"X5" rectangle out of white cardstock.
2. Use the embossing folder from the Tropical Vibes set to create a three dimensional texture to the 3.75"X5" rectangle
3. Use your blending tool to apply ink to the embossed rectangle. I used both olive and evergreen inks to give the leaves more depth.
4. Use your layering stamps from Tropical Vibes to stamp a flower.
5. Stamp the same flower in a different ink on a post-it and cut it out. Be careful to stamp the masking flower over the sticky part of the post-it.
6. Place the post-it stamped flower over your original flower. Next, stamp another flower overlapping the first one onto the 3.75"X5" cardstock. You will be left with layered flowers when you take away the post-it mask.
7. Continue this process while stamping the rest of your composition.
8.  Emboss the banner from the Eres Majia (You are Magic) with your embossing ink and bronze powder. Cut the banner out with corresponding die.
9. Use your blending tool to ink the white cut out banner in Antique Gold.
10. Stamp the You are Magic sentiment inside the banner with permanent black ink.
11. Glue the entire composition onto the 3.75"X5"cardstock. And glue that rectangle onto the front of the card. 
12. I colored the white border on the front of the card with my gold marker. I think a stark white would have been jarring and the gold border complimented  the metallics used in the sentiment. 

Sometimes you may choose to use store bought mask sets. In this Halloween card, I used the cutouts sold in the Tim Holtz's moon masking set. First I used the full moon cutout to draw the moon, ink it and cut it out. Then, I layered the stencil with the moon pitting over the inked full moon. I then used my ink blending tool over the second stencil with the surface irregularities. 

I love how it turned out!