Basic card design ideas

In my Live today I wanted to talk about how I gather design ideas for making cards. I will often use multiple websites from fellow demonstrators, YouTube, Pinterest and other social media channels to trawl for design ideas, but sometimes the simplest solutions are best.

For simple cards, searching using the hashtag #simplestamping will bring a host of results. Often simple works well. A blended area of colour (see my blog from last week on how to do this) with an image stamped on top and a sentiment may be all you need.

But as you know, I tend to make more complex cards – and I love fun folds, of course! But today is about finding simple design ideas.

My first suggestion is to use layers. Here are my measurements for simple layered cards. You can choose one, two, or three layers, depending on how detailed you want your card to be. Layers add depth and interest to even a simple card.

Here are the measurements I use:

• Card base (portrait) 21cm x 14.8cm scored at 10.5cm (8½” x 5½” scored at 4¼”)
• Card base (landscape) 10.5cm x 29.6cm scored at 14.8cm (11” x 4¼” scored at 5½”)
• Layer 1: 10cm x 14.3cm (4” x 5¼”)
• Layer 2: 9.5cm x 13.8cm (3¾” x 5”)

Each layer above is 0.5cm (1/4″) less than the previous one. Try using layers that are 1cm (1/2″) different from each other. This makes the layers much more obvious and can provide a pleasing contrast on a card. The Stampin’ Up! colours combine so well together that colour coordination is easy.

You can then add elements to your card, such as images, die cuts, shapes, and sentiments.

Finally, jazz up any card with ribbon, twine or gems.

However, my focus today is to give you more design ideas and my principal suggestion is to use our catalogues. Over the past year Stampin’ Up! have added card design templates in the catalogues. You can see the current ones from the annual and mini catalogues in the pictures below and in the video where I discuss how to use these to give yourself design ideas for cards and for scrapbooking.

Here are the design ideas from the annual catalogue (page 22):

And here are the design ideas from the current mini catalogue (page 12):

None have any measurements, they are purely to give you design ideas. Or let these sketches fire your imagination and produce your own design ideas.

In today’s live I chatted about finding design ideas, showed these catalogue pages and developed a few ideas for cards along the way. I wanted to make some sympathy and thinking of you cards, as I am running low. Here are some of the cards I made. There are no measurements for these – please see the video for more information.

You can see others in the video.

How do you gain card design ideas? What are your favourites? Please let me know in the comments below!

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Don’t forget – you get a FREE tutorial of 10 cards when you place an order with me. There’s a different set every month. And, if your order is over £40, you will also get to choose stuff from my online shop to the value of your order!

Stylish Shapes Dies [159183] £28.00	Beautiful Bokeh 6" X 6" (15.2 X 15.2 Cm) Designer Series Paper [164607] £11.75	Brights A4 Cardstock [161766] £10.75	Subtles A4 Cardstock [161765] £10.75	Regals A4 Cardstock [161710] £10.75
Neutrals A4 Cardstock [161764] £10.75	Basic White A4 Cardstock [159228] £13.00	Baker's Twine Essentials Pack [155475] £10.25	Night Of Navy 3/8" (1 Cm) Bordered Ribbon [160581] £8.50	Mini Stampin' Cut & Emboss Machine [150673] £62.00