It's card making time...

I've recently been trying out some new craft tools courtesy of Tonic Studios. I know I've not had a huge number of posts on my cardmaking, but it is something that does go on in the background here. Sometimes I sell my cards, but most times, I use them myself. Every so often I will fill up my box with cards so I'm prepared for all occasions. You're going to see a lot more cardmaking posts this year as I try out my new tools.

Here are the Tonic Tools I'm using for these cards...

Petal Pairs Punches

Crossing Heart Punch

Simplicity Power Punch - Crossing Rings

Shape mate and Rulers

Mini Heart Sider Punch

Royal Fleur 2 in 1 Punch

Border System

A young friend of mine has just got engaged and so it was time to make some engagement cards - one for my friend, and a couple to keep in my box as stock. I'm not sure which one I will send her yet!

I mostly use my computer printer to print out greetings. Sometimes I print directly onto the card blanks, and sometimes I will print a page full of greetings on nice paper and then just cut them out as I need them.

For some of these cards, I used a simple layout with a wave of colour at the bottom of the card. I used the shape mate tool and wavy ruler for the wavy line.

For the flowers, I have been trying out Tonic Studio's petal pairs punches which I must say are great fun to use - especially for someone who loves playing with paper like me.

For the card below, I punched a small circle punch through the petal pairs finished flowers so that the colour of the paper underneath would show through as a feature. I also used the crossing hearts and crossing ring punches. The ring punch is one of their new simplicity geared punches and it was a dream to use. Hardly any effort required! I can imagine if you were doing several hundred wedding invitations it would make light work of them! I backed the heart and ring punches with holographic card, it doesn't show up well in the scan, but in person it looks very effective.

For this next card, I wanted a softer more vintage feel to it, and so I chose a pretty floral to punch one half of the petal pairs. A small jewel in the centre of each flower adds a delicate touch.

I was able to use some of my thrift shop lace in the next card. This card uses one of my sheet of pre printed greetings. I used the crossing hearts punch to make a matching envelope too. I backed the hearts with the same metallic grey paper used in the card. I think this is my favourite card. I love the duck egg and silver together. It would work nice as a wedding invitation or wedding card too.

This one has a more masculine feel about it, even though it is floral, the choice of colours means it isn't too girly, and I think the royal fleur border looks great on masculine cards.

Because I enjoyed playing with the wavy layout, I rustled up a couple of birthday cards while I was at it.

I used my favourite tiny mother of pearl buttons to make centres for these flowers and on the wave, I used a small heart sider punch (with Tonic Studios border system) and then I backed the striped paper with a different pattern. Simple but effective I think.

In the card below I used a small circle punch to make a hole in the top flower of the petal pairs so that the bottom flower colour showed through. I used up the punched out hearts from the card above. (Don't you love punches where you can use both the punched shape and the cutout? No waste!)

Next cardmaking session I'll be creating some anniversary cards. My parents anniversary is at the beginning of February so I better get a move on hadn't I !

Oh, and here's a page you can use that is ready laid out with greetings for you to print and use in your cardmaking. Just click to enlarge, save to your hard drive and insert into your favourite DTP software and print onto some nice quality paper. It fits an A4 piece of paper. Chop up and use. Have fun!