I’ve been a scrapbooker for almost 16 years, but I’ve only been cardmaking for about 4 years. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of cardmaking, and sharing my finished cards with my friends and family. I’ve learned a few tips and tricks over the last 4 years, and I thought I’d share one of them with you today.
One of the big mysteries to me as I began my cardmaking days was how to stitch, add brads, or include gromets without leaving a mess on the inside of the card? What do you do with that mess when you give the card away to someone?
Here are a few ways that I hide the “mess” on the inside of my cards so I can present my loved ones with a “clean” card:
1. If you’re adding brads to flowers or other embellishments, add them to the item before adhering it to the card, and then add the item to the card.
For example, on this card I created the flowers by adding punched petal shapes onto a small circular paper scrap. I then added the brads before adhering them to the card front. That way the brad ends didn’t show inside the card.
2. If you plan to stitch on your card, consider stitching on a background panel and then adding it to your card.
Here I used my Sew Easy tool to handstitch the clover stems on the white cardstock before adding it to the black card base. See–a lovely clean card ready to gift to someone.
Here’s an example of the above two tips–a small panel of patterned paper where I stitched and added brads before adhering it to the card so the recipient can’t see the mess on the inside.
Note: if you include a lot of stitching using floss rather than thread, to hide the bulk you can adhere the stitched panel with foam squares.
3. If you can’t avoid stitching on the card itself, you can always hide the stitching on the inside like I did in the card below.
Here I machine stitched over the paper strips on the card front, and then covered the stitching on the inside of the card with a paper strip.
This card is another example where I stitched quite a bit on the front, leaving the inside a complete mess.
I simply cut a cardstock panel to match the inside which covered the stitching, thus leaving me with a clean card ready to give away to someone.
So, there you have it–a card mystery unraveled. Happy cardmaking!
