Craft Cardmaking for Beginners
I’ve been researching the craft cardmaking topic to learn more about the field of handmade cardmaking. After all, I haven’t really made very many cards myself over the years so I consider myself a real beginner.
Now that I am retired I would like to make cards for birthdays, Christmas, and other occasions of celebration including friendships. I have discovered that I need to define a few things. Even some of the tools used in craft cardmaking are items that some people have never heard of. So they might very well be asking, when they visit a cardmaking site “What is a paper cutter? Is it a pair of scissors?” That may cause some of us to smile but if you don’t already do the craft of scrapbooking, you may not know what a paper cutter is. “What is a pop-dot?” others may ask, especially if they are reading about adhesives. It isn’t obvious at first glance. Or, how about a bone folder? I can just imagine what pictures someone might have in their head after hearing that they need one of those to do handmade cardmaking.
Of course most people will know what those items are even if they don’t yet do the craft of cardmaking or scrapbooking. It might be because they know someone who does those crafts. Or it may be because they check out what the items are used for, which then makes the meaning of the term quite obvious. However, there are terms used in various websites or blogs that are not so obvious since they are refering to various commercial products that are being used by many people in their craft cardmaking to make their beautiful cards. Another is the terminology for different types of cards. A few of these that I have come across in the last few weeks are: Tilda cards, easel cards, trifold cards, gatefold cards, shutter cards etc. I think I know what most of them are but I am not positive about some of them.
I am assuming that I am not the only one who begins and doesn’t understand much of the insider lingo. So I think the next task that I will do is to check out what all these terms mean that are specific to craft cardmaking and post the ones that I find here. It is not absolutely essential to know the terminology to begin the craft of cardmaking but it would be nice to know. Some of the terms relating to types of cards were not even obvious when I was reading a description while looking at a picture of the card that had been produced. I will try to clarify for other beginners.