Do you struggle with card designs? Have you ever taken time to create a card and sat there completely stumped, not sure where to begin and what to use? Yes, I have been there too!
I have a fantastic way to challenge your creativity when card making: card map challenges! It took me years to realize that there are all sorts of card challenges out there that would help me overcome my creativity blocks. Once I started using card maps, card making became a breeze!
I love card map challenges so much that I joined the Paper Craft Crew as one of their design crew members, committing to participate in their card map challenges every week. Here's the link to their site if you want to have a look around.
To give you an idea of what a card map looks like, here's this week's Paper Craft Crew card map:
The idea is this: you look at the layout and then have a look at what you already own. Use the map to guide you in creating a card. As you can see in this particular challenge, there are three layers attached to the card base, each one is supposed to be unique. You are also to add a phrase on top of, or on, one of the layers.
You decide on the colors, whether or not you want to use designer paper, and what kind of sentiment you will use (think what's coming in your life: birthday, graduation, Father's Day, etc). You also decide on the card base color. You can also change the layout from horizontal to vertical = the map is just a map, to guide you but as with any map, how you reach the final destination is up to you. Google does that too: gives you several different options to reach your destination and card map challenges do the same thing!
Beyond making those decisions, the fun is adding embellishments (ribbon, gems, jewels, pearls, brads, etc) to complete your card.
Other than Paper Craft Crew challenges, which are weekly, there are other sites that also offer weekly card challenges. Many are layout challenges like the one above; some sites also include color challenges, tic-tac-toe challenges, coloring tool challenges, and so on.
Here are some of the other sites I often check out when I need card design inspiration:
But: there are many other sites you can find if you ask The Google! If you want to see what I created using the card map challenge above, come on back tomorrow. My card is designed and my post is ready to share!
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