Supplies for Handmade Cards

Get some paper, then some glue. Add embellishments. Here's a card from me to you!heart and glue image by Rog999 from Fotolia.com

Sending a greeting card to a loved one is a quick and easy way to let them know that you care and are thinking about them. Sending a card you made yourself makes that message extra special. But to make your own greeting cards you will have to pick up some supplies or use things around the house.

Paper and Card Stock

A personal, homemade card starts with the right base. The majority of any card is made of paper. A good inventory of solid-color card stock, mostly in white and cream, but can also be several other colors, is important for anyone who wants to make homemade cards to have on hand. Another important item to have a good supply of is decorative papers or patterned card stock. Some paper crafters prefer to work with patterned card stock while others prefer to work with the lighter weight of decorative papers. Either will work to make a lovely card. Make sure you gather a collection of papers that will work for both genders and cover a majority of popular occasions and life events, such as birthdays, national holidays and anniversaries.

Rubber stamps are the easiest and quickest way to convey the message of your card. Purchase sentiment and image stamps to cover a variety of occasions, to suit many different tastes and make sure at least some of your stamps will work for cards for men and women. Clear stamps and an acrylic stamp block are generally less expensive than wood-mounted stamps and better for building a large library of stamps on a budget. You also need ink pads. Black and brown ink pads are a must; ink pads in other colors aren't as necessary, but you may decide you want them. With the brown and black ink, you can stamp images onto your homemade cards and then either leave them plain or color them in with watercolor pencils or special markers.

Homemade cards are assembled with a few different adhesives when trying to achieve the best result. Use tack strips, or an automatic tape gun to get the best result when layering larger parts of the card together, such as backgrounds onto the card base or strips of paper onto the card. Use foam dots to add dimension to an element you are attaching to the card, like to pop a die cut shape up off the face of the card. Glue pens are also a handy tool to attach smaller pieces that would otherwise be difficult to adhere.

Homemade cards often seem to need just a little more after the card stock, paper and stamps. Add embellishments to give your homemade cards that special something. Use self-adhesive rhinestones or pearls to give the card some bling. Emboss one or more pieces of paper with an embossing and fold machine. Use a paper punch to give the edge of your card a decorative cut or add die cut shapes to the card. Add glitter glue to part of the card to make it sparkle. Ribbon is a popular and inexpensive embellishment for homemade cards. Just make sure the embellishments don't overpower the main elements of the card and that they suit the person the card is intended for—you don't want to add a bunch of ribbon, glitter and paper flowers to a card for a manly man, or hunting emblems to a card for a city girl.