Everyone loves receiving a greeting card -- and in today's age of electronic communication, a real tangible paper greeting card is becoming a rare occurrence indeed. Imagine the recipient's delight when they realize the card is a hand made treasure from the heart. Making your own hand made greetings cards is satisfying on many levels. Your recipient feels extra special that anyone would go through so much trouble for them. And you get a chance to really let your creativity shine. Each hand made greeting card is a mini work of art -- the only one of its kind in the world. For busy crafters making greeting cards gives them the chance to be creative in small manageable doses -- after all a greeting card, no matter how elaborate, is still a small project and finished relatively quickly. Even the kids can get into making greetings cards, and in fact, making cards is a fun family project. You can use all kinds of techniques tools and adornments for your greetings cards (or follow some of the designs we've come up with below). Rubber stamping, ink and/or dry embossing, and quilling are just a few of the techniques regularly employed when making greeting cards, as well as other paper crafting techniques, tools and materials.

Card Making Projects Gift Tags Punch Art Christmas Cards Rubber Stamping Hanukah Cards Squared Circle Cards and Envelopes for All Occasions

Photo Cards Greeting cards are also a great way to share special photos with the folks you love -- think of them as mini or single photo scrapbooks. The Wreath Cards above are great examples of this. Card Making Tips and Basics Decide on an envelope before you make your card -- while you can make your own envelopes too, it's usually easier to make the card to fit the envelope. Score your paper before you fold it for a crisp professional crease. You can use a ruler and a bone folder or a dry embossing tool to do this. If you don't have an embossing tool or bone folder, the end of a knitting needle would do or even a ball point pen that has no ink in it. Place your ruler along the line where you want the card to fold and draw along it with your scoring tool of choice. Now the card will easily fold exactly where you want it to. Use the side of a bone folder to press the crease in your card.

Invaluable Tool A bone folder (pictured) is an invaluable tool for card makers You use it to score and crease your paper for a professional crease. It's also a utility tool for a variety of tasks, many that you won't discover until you come up with them.

Be sure to visit or Paper Crafts Home Page with lots of paper crafts tutorials and projects including rubber stamping and hand made greetings cards and gift wraps!