Today I’ve got some simple tips for lovely vintage handmade cards that they’ll love! Who’s they?
Anyone who you send cards too! Well, maybe we should say adults…kids might not appreciate these quite as much. But parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles? You’ll knock their socks off with your artsy card making!
Let’s see what I mean…
What do you think? An adults only kind of greeting? Maybe…I want to give you some really simple tips to create your own designs.
Before I do that however, the other day in our Facebook Live, we also created a totally different lovely vintage card. The gang there had a few different definitions of what “vintage” means.
- looks a little roughed up like it’s old
- Anything early century
- Aged, from times past…
- Old fashioned
- Antique
You can join my free Facebook group, the VIPeeps to see how to make a fabulous vintage card like this masculine one (as well as quite a few others!).
Even is this look doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll find lots of techniques in this “foxy” card you’ll want to see how to add to your own card making!
Simple Tips for Lovely Vintage Handmade Cards That They’ll Love
If you’ve never tried to make a card like this before, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Jo’s Tips for Vintage Cards
- Use muted colours. I like to use the brown and grey tones for my vintage cards. But in the video you’ll also see a blue one…light dusty pink also is a great tone to convey “aged” or antique. Try to limit yourself to only a few colours.
- Create depth with patterned papers. Patterned papers make your first steps easy. However if you don’t have any on hand in the muted tones, feel free to stamp similar colours onto a background piece of cardstock to create depth.
- Add texture. One of the things most noticeable on vintage anything is texture. Smaller texture is best, like the Timber 3D embossing folder in the fox card of the Timeworn Type like you see below in today’s card. I embossed it first then brushed ink over it. The bumps and ridges really pick up the colour.
- Shade, shade, shade. Almost all vintage paper items (scrapbook pages, cards, invitations, etc) have additional colour added. Here I’ve used my Blending Brush to add a couple different colours (Cajun Craze and Early Espresso). TIP: Before I did that, I laid down my coneflower dies and blended ink right over top. Then I moved them for final placement so you can see the lighter shadow underneath.
- Build up lots of layers. Your layers don’t need to be too bulky. Even though here we’ve got 6 of them, they are offset so they are not all one on top of the other. They are…
- the card front itself
- a trio of dies
- gold trim
- coloured ribbon
- rustic dots
- a popped up label greeting
You don’t need to add ALL these elements to one card if you’re just starting out with vintage card making. Instead, choose one or two techniques to start yourself off. When you feel a bit more confident, add in a couple more!
If you’d like a little simpler design, check out this DIY vintage wedding card.
What Stamps Would Work for Vintage Cards?
When you’re searching through your stamp sets looking for designs that will work, think of softer images. I used the Nature’s Harvest for today’s card which is ideal. But the Stylish Sketches you see in the fox card has 3 awesome images that are perfect! (and it’s free up until August 31st with a $60 order!)
Also sentiments that are more “fancy”, not cute are a better match for these types of designs.
Be sure to check out everything I used by simply clicking on this list you can print, pin or order from. I really appreciate you ordering your Stampin’ Up! supplies from me!
I would love to see the stamp sets you choose and your card designs!
In fact, if you post a pic of your card right here in the VIPeeps by August 22nd using my simple tips for lovely vintage handmade cards that they’ll love, you just might win 5 handmade cards from me!
