How do I make a card that does not look homemade?

The difference between a card that looks handmade and one that looks home-made is mostly mechanical. Cracked folds, wrinkled paper from wet glue, and elements placed by eye rather than measured account for almost all of it, and each has a straightforward fix.

What you'll need

• Card around 250 to 300 gsm for the base
• A scoring board, or a bone folder and a blunt point
• A steel rule, cutting mat and sharp knife or a trimmer
• A dry adhesive — tape runner, glue dots or double-sided tape
• Envelopes bought before you cut the card to size

Step by step

1. Buy the envelopes first and size the card to them.This is the step people do last and regret. An envelope in a standard size decides the folded card dimensions, and cutting card to fit an envelope you already own is far easier than finding an envelope for a card you have already made.
2. Choose a card weight that stands up.Grammage is grams per square metre. Ordinary paper is around 80 to 120; a card base wants roughly 250 to 300 gsm so it stands on a mantelpiece. Layers and toppers can be much lighter.
3. Score the fold before folding it.Run a blunt point — a bone folder, an empty ballpoint, a scoring tool — along a ruler where the fold will be. It compresses the fibres so the card bends cleanly. Heavy card folded without scoring cracks along the outside of the fold every time.
4. Fold away from the score.The scored groove goes on the inside of the fold, so the outside face stretches over a supported crease. Folding the other way tears the surface.
5. Cut with a steel rule and repeated light passes.One heavy pass wanders and tears. Several light passes with the blade running against a steel rule give a clean edge. A guillotine or a rotary trimmer is quicker and more consistent if you make cards often.
6. Use dry adhesives on paper.Wet glue puts water into paper, which swells, then shrinks as it dries and wrinkles permanently. Tape runners, double-sided tape and glue dots hold well and put no moisture in. Keep a wet PVA for card-to-card and embellishments.
7. Lay out with equal margins and deliberate alignment.Mount a panel with the same margin on the left, right and top, and slightly more at the bottom — the way a picture is mounted. Elements placed by eye almost always end up slightly off, and slightly off reads as a mistake where deliberately off-centre reads as design.
8. Limit yourself to two or three elements.A restricted palette and a small number of components looks designed. The characteristic homemade look comes from using every technique and embellishment on one card.
9. Add dimension with foam pads.Raising one element a few millimetres above the rest with foam adhesive pads adds shadow and depth, and it is the single cheapest way to make a flat card look considered.
10. Leave the inside clean.A plain insert of lighter paper, glued or stitched in at the fold, gives a clean surface to write on and hides the back of anything punched or stitched through the front.

Tips

• Weigh a finished card before posting. Anything with layers, foam pads or embellishments quickly moves into a higher postage band, and thickness matters as well as weight.
• Cut a batch of card bases at one sitting. The setup is most of the work, and having a stack of scored blanks ready means a card takes ten minutes rather than forty.
• Keep offcuts. Card and patterned paper offcuts become the mounted panels and small elements of later cards, which is most of what a card needs.

Common mistakes

• Folding heavy card without scoring — The outside of the fold cracks and the surface layer splits. It is the most obvious single tell of a card made without the right technique, and scoring takes five seconds.
• Using a wet glue stick or PVA on paper — Water swells the paper fibres, and as it dries they shrink unevenly and leave permanent wrinkles and bubbles. Dry adhesives avoid it entirely.
• Making the card first and hunting for an envelope — Standard envelope sizes are limited. Sizing the card to an envelope you have is trivial; finding an envelope for an unusual card is not.
• Placing elements by eye — Small misalignments read as errors. Measuring the margins, or using a grid, produces the tidiness that separates a made card from an assembled one.

If it doesn't work

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