Perhaps I am unusual but I started my paper crafting with Scrapbooking - lots of people seem to have been cardmakers and then gone on to scrapping but I am the opposite. I love to scrap, I feel like I am ok at it and it is relatively easy for me to sit down, play with paper and end up (admittedly not always quickly) with a layout.
Now cards always stressed me out! I WANTED to make cards, for goodness sake the amount of money I gave to Clintons every Christmas meant I really NEEDED to make cards but I just didn't get it!
Then a lovely crafting friend pointed out the blindingly obvious - treat the card as if it were a scrapbook layout but instead of photos and journaling the key elements were the sentiment and the embellishment. It is so simple but it was my little lightbulb moment. I would never say I am an expert card maker, or even a very good card maker, but making cards doesn't cause me so much stress now - it is also a great way to use up your scraps (both of my cards below were made with bits from my scraps box) and Suzanne will be doing a specific feature on card making with scraps very soon so keep an eye out for that!
For the first time last Christmas I made every single Christmas card I gave. I also made around 90% of the birthday cards I gave out last year too and aim to make it 100% this year!
On that point of treating a card like a scrapbook layout I thought I would have a little play this aftenoon at creating a couple of quick and easy cards using the two sketches we have had on the blog for this month.
This card was based on my sketch posted HERE but changed to a rectangular format and with a few adjustments here and there.
This one I used Ann's sketch posted HERE. i loved the photo placement and grouping in her layout so I used patterned aper to recreate the shapes and positioned the sentiment where she had her journaling space.
They were of course layout sketches but following the idea of pretending my card is a page I used them as my starting point. As always with sketches the end product doesn't always match the sketch exactly but the idea came from the sketch and that is what a sketch is all about - getting a design idea - if your final layout or card ends up identical to the sketch then that is fine, but if you develop it in a slightly different direction that is fine too - it's all good!
How did you get into paper crafting? Were you a card maker turned scrapper? A scrapper first and a card dabbler like me? Or did you wander through a whole host of crafts before settling on scrapping?