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Eight Card Making Tips For DIY Invites

If you’re looking for paper crafting tips and tricks or just want to make your cards, we have some great card making hacks for you. There are so many little tips and tricks that not only help you make your DIY wedding invitations quicker, but they’ll also help the finished results look professional too!

Card Making Tips for a Professional Finish

1. Glueing Craft & Diamante Embellishments to Cards and Invites

Which is the best adhesive or glue for sticking card making embellishments to your wedding stationery? There are lots of different adhesives to choose from, and two of the most popular are Hot Melt Glue sticks and ‘Gem-Tac‘.

Hot melt glue using a glue gun is a quick, easy and convenient adhesive. You have to use it quickly and be sure that what you’re sticking is in precisely the right place and for example, not ‘off-centre’.

Hot glue sticks are great but when sticking metal embellishments check that you’ve achieved a good bond if you’re not fast enough and the glue has already cooled on a metal embellishment it might fall off.

Gem-Tac glue from Beacon Adhesives requires drying time but allows you time to find the correct position. It’s tremendous craft glue and once set is very difficult to remove so there’s no chance the embellishments will fall off your card.

2. Create Professional Looking Wedding Invitations

Have you ever wondered how professional wedding invites have that ‘gathered ribbon’ effect? A ‘gathered’ or ‘pinched’ ribbon below an embellishment is a popular style of decoration in wedding stationery. You can use it on your wedding invitations but all of the ‘on the day stationery’ including guest books.

The easiest and quickest way to create a ‘pinched’ or ‘gathered’ ribbon effect is by using a hot glue gun. You simply add a little glue beneath the ribbon and before the glue has a chance to cool ‘pinch’ the ribbon together with your fingers and then flatten it. You can add the adhesive at any time during the assembly process, whichever you find most comfortable. You can see this process and just how quick and easy it is in the video below.

A hot melt glue gun is a worthwhile investment if you’re making quite a few wedding invitations and plan to make ‘on the day’ stationery as well. Making your invitations will be faster using a glue gun, but if you don’t have access to one, then you can simply achieve the same effect using cotton. Simply tie a knot around the centre of your ribbon, and this will create the gathered ribbon effect in the same way as the glue gun. We show you how in the video below.

3. Make Sure Your Embellishments Are Not 'Off Centre'

Making sure things are central is key in how to make professional wedding invitations. The best way to achieve this is to create a template as you won’t have to judge or measure and each embellishment will be central every time. It saves so much time when making lots of invitations.

So here’s what to do:

  • Cut yourself a strip of paper just wider than the embellishment you are going to use and longer than the width of your invitation.
  • Fold the excess paper over the sides of the invitation, so the ribbon of paper fits snuggly onto the front.
  • Take the paper ribbon and fold in half (exactly and make a firm crease).
  • Place your embellishment exactly half on and half of this central crease and draw around the embellishment, make sure your drawing is slightly larger than the embellishment.
  • Cut out along your line.
  • Replace your paper ribbon over your stationery, and you will have a magical placement ‘hole’ in which to glue your embellishment.
  • Place all your embellishments for all your stationery precisely in the centre with ease!

This method really does speed up the making of wedding stationery and also can be used for other card making projects as well.

Making a Template

Making a template is easy and it will help you speed up making your wedding invitations.

Cut a Strip of Paper

Make a template for your wedding invitation.

The strip needs to be wider than your embellishment. Fold it around the edges of the invitation.

Make Sure the Paper Fits

Make sure the paper strip fits snugly onto the front of the invite.

Getting the Position

Fold your paper strip in half and then position your embellishment half on and half off the paper. Draw around it.

Cut Along Your Line

Cutting your template.

Cut a long your line, it doesn’t have to be too neata s you won’t see this at all!

Replace The Paper Over The Invitation

You can clearly see where you need to stick the embellishment on your invitation.

Perfectly Placed

Less measuring and you can be confident that each one is in the correct place!

4. Keep Your Scissors Sharp

If you cut a lots of paper, card and ribbon for your card making you’ll know how important sharp scissors are!

Keep your scissors nice and sharp by cutting regular glass paper or sandpaper.

Try to use a relatively fine sheet of glass paper such as a P80, P100 or P120 ISO/FEPA Grit Designation Paper (the higher the P number the finer the grit size). The P number is normally printed on the back of the glass paper.

Fold a sheet of sandpaper in half with the sandpaper facing outwards and cut the paper with the scissors. Cut long strips along the full length of the scissor blades and repeat this about 10-12 times. Wipe the scissors to remove any grit.

Keep your scissors sharp.
Rustic style wedding using kraft card and twine is perfect for a barn wedding

5. Stop Ribbon From Fraying

One of our favourite card making tips and ideas is stopping satin ribbon from fraying. It really does spoil a handmade card (unless you’re wanting to create that effect). Nice clean cut ribbon is essential for wedding invitations with ribbon.

You can use Fray Check or if you don’t have any of this available stop the fraying by heat sealing. 

6. How to Stick Card onto Glitter Card

Glitter card is popular in wedding invitation designs. A top tip for making your own wedding invitations is layering card onto glitter card. Select your glue carefully as not all glues stick to glitter.

7. Too Many Strings From Your Glue Gun Sticks?

Hot glue gun crafts are excellent for lots of DIY crafting and Christmas card making, but sometimes glue sticks for glue guns create strings which you always have to rub away.

If you keep your hot glue gun sticks in the freezer before use, you’ll find there are far fewer strings.

Keep hot melt glue sticks on ice
Keep your glue sticks on ice for less stringiness!

8. Use the Best Wholesale Craft Supplies

Don’t forget the value of your suppliers! We know we’re biased but if you make your own Christmas cards or are wondering how to make a birthday card then you’ve come to the right place!