What You Actually Need to Start Card Making
By Chris · · 6 min read
A short, honest list of the tools that matter when you are starting out — and the ones you can safely ignore for the first year.
Every craft has a shopping list that grows faster than your skill does. Card making is especially bad for it, because almost everything is genuinely lovely and almost nothing is genuinely necessary.
Here is what I would actually buy first.
The four things you need
A paper trimmer. Not scissors. A trimmer with a scoring blade will do more for the look of your cards than any stamp set, because square edges and crisp folds are most of what separates a homemade card from a handmade one.
A bone folder. Two pounds, lasts forever, and it is the difference between a fold and a crease.
One stamp pad in a color you like. One. You will be tempted by the full family. Resist it until you know which colors you reach for.
Cardstock in white and one color. Buy the good stuff in small quantities rather than the cheap stuff in bulk — thin cardstock folds badly and no technique fixes it.
What can wait
A die cutting machine is wonderful and you do not need it yet. Neither do you need an embossing folder collection, a heat tool, or more than one adhesive. Every one of those is worth owning eventually, and none of them will improve the first twenty cards you make.
What actually improves your cards
Time and repetition, mostly. The fifth card you make from a layout is noticeably better than the first, and it costs nothing but an evening. If you want to spend money somewhere useful, spend it on good cardstock and a trimmer, and put the rest into making more cards.
