Five Tips for Mass Producing Holiday Cards

The holiday season is rapidly approaching.  For the crafter, handmade cards are always on the menu during this time either as gift sets or as holiday cards to send to friends and family.  While these cards are beautiful, they can often be stressful to create and replicate.  However, by following a few simple steps, we can greatly reduce the effort it takes to make multiple handmade cards.

Recently I was asked to create cards for a ladies small group for the thanksgiving season.   This meant that I needed to quickly get a large group of cards ready to assemble. Above is the Thank You card that I made for our luncheon.  During the process, I came up with  5 simple steps to make bulk card making easier.

1:  Come up with a concept that you like, but which is easily replicated.  If you are not good at conceptualizing, take a look Pinterest, blogs, sketches and crafty forums for some inspiration.  Study these cards to see how many techniques are required to make the cards.  Try to limit the number of involved techniques to only one or two.  Remember, you will have to do each of these techniques repeatedly in order to make a large number of cards.  While the card may have really pretty techniques, the techniques tend to take a lot of time to do. In my example, I chose stamping.  I purposely did not include any other techniques, as this would have added substantial time to the assembly process.

2.  Make a prototype card.  This sounds like common sense, but it is amazing what you can learn from doing one first before you begin the process of making 100 more.  Take good notes while you work.  As you can see from the photo, I used both my trimmer and my ruler to take good notes about the size of every aspect of the cards.

3.   Purchase supplies in bulk.  If you want all of your holiday cards to look the same, be sure to buy enough patterned paper to make the number of cards you desire, using the concept you are using.  Make sure you have enough ink in the desired color as well as enough of all the other embellishments you wish to use on the cards.  I always buy new to ensure that I have enough of everything.  There is nothing worse than getting half way done with a project, only to realize that you need more of a specific supply that the store no longer carries.

4. Take a little help from pre-made supplies when you can.   In my case, I found reasonably priced card blanks to use as my base.  I could have very easily made my own card base and envelopes, but the time involved would have made the process so much more stressful.  Most big box stores carry reasonably priced card making packs that are super cute. 

5.  Treat your project like a page kit.  We all know that scrapbooking is so much easier when everything is kitted together before we start.  Cut out all your pieces, and then bag them into kits.  This way, as you have a few minutes, you can quickly assemble cards.  All the pieces are right there, and there is no need for keeping tools with you at all times. By kitting your cards, you can actually drop 2 or 3 in your bag to put together while you are on the go for other activities.

I hope these tips make the process of bulk card making seem a little less daunting.  We would love to see your holiday cards or gifts.  Be sure to post them in the gallery at Scraps of Color!