10 TOP HACKS To Speed Up Your Card Making! ⏰

Hi crafters. Thank you for joining me. Now, as you know, I've been super busy with my new job and I've had hardly any time to do any card making, any journaling, any scrapbooking, any crafting of any sort. So, I thought I'd put this video together for you because these are my top tips. If you do need a greeting card really, really quickly, but you don't have time to spend hours designing it, cutting all the pieces out, gluing it together, these top tips are going to help speed up that process for you. Now, I do appreciate that lots of us like to take our time over card making and doing any of our paper crafts because that's where we get our enjoyment. But occasionally, you do need to speed things up. You do need to have these tricks up your sleeve just to get that project out within minutes or maybe an hour or so. So, let's have a look and let me know in the comments if you've got any other top tips for speeding up your crafting. Now, let's start at the end with your envelope. Because if you've made a card and like me, you like to make your own card bases, you've then got to find an envelope that's going to match and it's not always possible. Sometimes you have to jiggle things about or worst case, you're going to have to actually make an envelope as well. Not ideal if you're in a hurry. So, the first thing I say to do is choose the envelope that you want to use. That's roughly the card size that you want to make. Then make your card base from this. And you know you've already got that envelope at the end ready to pop and give to the recipient. Now, let's talk mats and layers. You've cut yourself a card base, you want to add your mats and layers, which many of us do on a card. So, I've chosen the dark color to go underneath, the light color to go on top as I normally would. First things first, I don't measure. Okay? If you're measuring and you get it some millimeter off or so, you might feel the need to go back and redo those measurements, recut another piece, that's wasting time. So, all I do is place it so that I've got two of the edges revealed there. So, I've got about 5 mm, maybe a quarter of an inch gap. And I just mark it with a pencil or sometimes I mark it with a pokey tool as well, so I don't have to rub out my lines. And then I go in and I just cut my layers with my trimmer. And then with this one, I do exactly the same with my next layer. Now, of course, this depends on how many layers you're doing, whether you're doing one or whether you're doing eight layers, maybe. I would just keep going through the process, layering from the bottom up. Mark with a pencil again about 5 mm on these two edges. You've already got your edges there. Cut those two lines. And you know what? It's well worth remembering. Nobody is going to go along and measure your mats and layers. Absolutely nobody's going to do that. If you think it looks even, they are also going to think it looks even. If you tell somebody, "Oh, I don't think my mats and layers are even." They're going to look at it. Don't mention it. No one's going to see a thing and you'll forget that you haven't measured them. Look, does that look like it's an even matted layer card? Now, something else though, if for example, you have accidentally just cut them a little bit off. So, let's take a little bit off there. Let's take a little bit of one of this edge, these edges as well. Just say we were brushing a little bit too much. And actually now they you see the edges are a bit thick. The top and bottom's a bit thin. And the same not quite right this side on here. The edges are a bit thin here. They're too big at the top on the white base. Yeah. Not working. So what I'm going to do instead is I am going to skew my mats and layers. I'm going to purposely put these slightly off so they're not level. They're not straight. So rather than trying to put that on straight and worrying about maybe cutting my card base down, which is another option, if you do want to put straight layers on and you've cut your mats too small, simply trim your card base down ever so slightly. It will work. But otherwise, skew these layers. So put one a few degrees to one side, the other one a few degrees to the other. Make it look like a purpose tilted mat layer. Make it look a little bit funky, a little bit modern. It's going to work. It's going to save you recutting those mats and layers. You could even take something like some tags, just tuck them coming out from under here. Maybe something like a torn piece of paper or a piece of notebook page. That works really well. So, for example, just tearing a notebook page out of a pad. Make sure it's the ring binder type. We can just take a small amount of this. Let's straighten that up. put this underneath a couple of edges. There's one there. Let's put one here as well. And again, you can skew those. And it looks purposeful. Now, what if you've got a stamped image on your card front and you've now got to go ahead and find some card stock to match before you matt and layer this. Maybe you're thinking that the card stocks that you have got are just not quite right. There's nothing that quite matches. You could spend hours trolling through your paper scraps to find the right color, but instead just do this. Take the ink that you've just stamped your image with. Pop down a mat onto your surface so you don't get it dirty. Cut yourself a mat and layer already. So, I've done this when I cut my stamped image. And I'm going to just swipe the edges of the card stock here. Now, my ink pad is getting a little bit old, so it's not as juicy as it used to be, but it doesn't matter because this could also look a bit like a textured paper underneath. I'm just going to swipe the edges here. And with the excess that's on the mat, I would definitely be spritzing that and smooshing some paper into it so as not to waste it and create a fun background. Pop that down on your card. Put your stamped layer over the top and we have got the perfect colored matte and layer. And what I really love, as you can see here, is you got a little bit of distressing in the background where it wasn't a perfectly juicy ink pad. It actually looks a little bit like a textured or a patterned piece of paper. It looks really, really beautiful, but matches so perfectly and it is super quick. Honestly, saves you hours going through all your paper scraps. Now, when it comes to choosing your sentiment, there's so many different ones you can look at, but say we're talking about stamp sentiments. I like to, if I'm in a hurry, look at the overall shape of a sentiment. So, for example, if I look at the overall shape of this one here, this is actually a Halloween sentiment, but hey, boo. I cannot easily cut that into a rectangle and make it look even. The same as this one. I absolutely love Cizzix, don't get me wrong. I adore them. But if I'm cutting something out, which is I'm absolutely going to be doing if I'm in a hurry because I'm not cutting this out. I'm stamping directly onto my project and there's a good chance I'm going to make a mistake there and have to redo the whole thing. So, always stamping onto a separate piece of card stock or paper to put onto your project to make sure that you don't ruin your project at the last minute. about making sure that your sentiment can easily be trimmed with a trimmer or craft knife and ruler, however you like to do it, into a square or rectangle shape. So, these are all perfect. So, for example, happy birthday there. I could these corners are going to be a little bit off because I'll have gaps here. Look at this. Having an have an amazing day. Absolutely perfect. It's in a square shape. I'm going to be stamping that one. Now, if you're not quite sure which one's going to look right as well, save yourself some time. This might take a little bit of preparation. You can do this in advance when you first receive a stamp set. Stamp multiple stamps at the same time. So, rather than just choosing one to stamp, it literally takes seconds to put three, four, five, six onto your stamping platform instead. So, I'm pretty sure I want to use have an amazing day. So, I'm going to put that one on there. Again, I'm going to be going for these ones are all sort of squares or rectangles in overall shape. So, I'm going to put that one on. I might come to another one here. So, thank you for being you. That's quite a nice one as well. But you'll know the sentiments or the type of phrases that you want to use because you're making this card in a hurry. So, maybe this one's got celebrate in it. We can easily cut these lines in as well. So, put one of those on. And lastly, you are the best from this stamp set. And of course, don't forget, you can absolutely mix and match the brands that you're using. Just remember to put them back in the right packaging. So, pick everything up at the same time. And there's going to be another tip coming up in a moment. In with this one, I'll take my black ink, which is generally what I use for stamping the uh sentiments. I use a black VersiFine Cla. It's my favorite. Either that or Momento depending on if I'm using mediums in the background or not. There's other videos on my channel all about that sort of thing and which inks to use. And I'm always using a positioning platform. So this way if I press down and I've missed anything on any one of these, I can easily go in and restamp. So you can see here I've missed a little bit in a couple of corners. I can see the ink is still on there. I just didn't press it down enough. So let's just pop them back again. So now time to quickly cut them out. You notice as well, I use a sticky grid in the bottom of my stamp platform so I can just pop my paper down, not worry about the magnets moving magnets around if I'm doing a large stamp either. Now, I tend to pop my platform back as it is like that and clean those up afterwards if I'm in a hurry. I'm just going to very roughly cut around each one of these so that I don't accidentally in my trimmer cut any of them out. And I'll take the first one, which is the one I think I'm going to use. Line this up. So, I'm lining up one of the lines on my trimmer, not the cutting line, one slightly in with the wording there. So, making sure that is as straight as possible. Making sure I'm not cutting anything off. I think that looks about right. And then from that one straight edge, I'm going to put that up against there. And as you can see, we are cutting round in a perfect rectangle. I haven't got to worry about fussy cutting at all. And go around the fourth side. And then you should have a perfect rectangle, your sentiment cut out perfectly, nice and straight, and that can go onto your card. Now, what if you want to use an ink that is say a pigment ink and you know it's going to take a long time to dry, but the color's perfect. You can't switch for a die based ink, something that's going to dry faster because you just want that particular color. The best thing to do here, rather than sitting around and waiting for ages for it to dry, clear embossing powder. This is just going to take you seconds and save you waiting 10 minutes and potentially ruining your project because you're trying to speed up the drying process. Simply pop some clear embossing powder over heat set that. You can get matte embossing powders as well if you don't like the glossiness and instantly I have got a nonsmudging stamped image in whatever color I like regardless of whether it's pigment or dye ink. And I know that I can now carry on with my project without worrying about ruining it. Now, I've always found to speed things up, investing in a small stapler. I have got the Tim Holtz one. This one is the little fastener one. I love it. I can do my mats and layers with this in no time at all. No waiting for glue to dry. I can also do the same with my sentiments as well. I just find this absolutely the best way, and you can do double staples as well, of attaching some items to a card without the wait for glue. And I think it looks really cool as well. I mean, how quick was that? I would tend to usually glue my mats down and use a foam tape there. So, then staples aren't an option, but I just think they look really funky. They're really modern and definitely a must if you are often in a hurry. Now, on to die cutting. And something to speed up your die cutting is, of course, to cut multiple layers at once. But to do this, you're going to need to use a thinner, lighter weight card stock or paper. So, I've got a pink and I've got a green so I can do my flowers and my leaves all at once. And I'm going to just layer those up. So there's two layers. You could do three or four depending on the weight of your paper and of course how good your die cutting machine is and the dyes are. And I'm just going to place two flower dyes there. Two leaf dies here. This will give me four layers of petals, four different leaf sprigs that I can use on my project and they're all going to come out at the same time. Now, always using low tack tape. This is just going to make sure that nothing moves. And again, backtracking, fixing mistakes is what's going to slow down your card making more than anything. So, prevention is definitely better than a cure in this instance. And then pop these in. As always, if you've seen any of my other videos about die cutting, I die cut upwards, particularly if we're going through multiple layers, thicker material, things like this. This isn't actually any thicker than any other die cutting material now because I use a paper and not card stock, but I'm still going to stagger everything and die cut upwards. Now, everything's cut through absolutely perfectly. All you need to do is separate your layers, shape those, and put them together. In addition, if you have a glue bottle like this, storing it upside down with a pin inside, some people like to store it on top of a wet sponge, keeping the glue down the bottom. This is also going to help speed up your crafting because you're not waiting for it to come down to the nozzle before you can use it. And if you are in a hurry with flower making, by turning the top petal upside down so that you've got the white facing upwards and then bringing those petals upwards into each other, you've got yourself an instant flower center and you haven't got to worry about looking for the perfect pearl or gem to go in the middle instead. So, I hope that's helped some of you. Again, let me know in the comments if you can think of any other ideas to share with everybody. If you haven't done already, I'd love it if you could subscribe to my channel. I will be trying to get videos out more regularly now. I've settled into my new job. Thank you for all the messages for the cards that I've received as well. Um, you've all been absolutely wonderful. Give me the time to get settled and get back into making these YouTube videos for you. So, take care everybody. Have a lovely weekend and I'll see you again soon.