Day 4: Fall, Thanksgiving and Gratitude Hooplah

Hi, it's Carla with some fall-ish cards for our Thanksgiving week of fun and craftiness!

I like to customize the cards I make according to the occasion and the recipient. It's definitely not the most efficient way to make cards, though. I end up designing a new card each time because I don't want to mass-produce the same card -- and designing a new card each time is pretty time-consuming. 

Lately I've been playing with a solution to this dilemma. I call it modular card-making. The idea is to create my own card components so I can put together a custom card quickly. My main components are card bases, stamped sentiments, patterned paper, and embellishments. I find that with those things, plus a punch or two, I can assemble a pretty good little modular card kit. Then, whenever I need a specific kind of card, I have all the pieces ready, and I can put together a custom card in just a few minutes.

Here are three simple cards I made using this idea.  I dug into my extensive stash of leftover paper scraps and pulled out colors that would work for my fall card-sending. I made three card bases, all different sizes, according to the sizes of scraps I had. Then I added a bit of patterned paper. I found three stamps in my stash with sentiments that would fit in my circle punch. I punched and layered circles and scalloped circles, punched some fall leaves in different colors, and then I was ready to mix and match! 

For this Hello card, I added a few punched leaves and a couple of tiny flower embellishments.

To the Thinking of You card, I added a couple of leaf punches and a bit of ribbon.

For my Thank You card, you guessed it -- more leaf punches, plus my Martha Stewart Crafts Punch Around the Page maple leaf set.

And here's the whole little family of fall-colored cards.

You can see that any of these sentiments and embellishments could have gone on any of the cards. Even the patterned paper could be mixed and matched. I'm looking forward to putting together some more modular kits like this!

Have you done something similar? Tell us about it!