Sometimes you just need an easy card to make with your Cricut. Nothing involving multiple materials, intricate construction, or all sort of patterns.
This happens to me all the time. I have a friends birthday or need a quick thank you card to send someone. All I have is my stack of solid colored cardstock and no time to go out and get all sorts of other materials.
That’s why I designed this series of super straight forward cards. They involved only 2 colors for cardstock. Easy assembly, standard envelope size (although I included an envelope template with the cut files) and covers all the most frequent occasions.
This simple card series includes the following: thank you, i love you, mother’s day, father’s day, congrats and happy birthday.
Before we go further, I highly recommend having a lint roller or masking tape around. It makes picking up the pieces on the mat sooo much easier.
Recommended Material for Simple Card Designs
Cardstock – I have a love hate relationship with textured cardstock. It never works for intricate design because it doesn’t stick as well to the light grip mat and rips when peeled off on the green mat. If you have to use textured cardstock, use it for the base.
My favorite is this Neehah Collections brand, it’s super affordable, comes in an assortment of colors, has a colored core so you can’t see fraying. This last part is important because even if the blade snags a little, you can probably just trim it and it will look fine.
Here are some of my other favorite brands:
- Recollection Assorted Starter Pack – Basic assorted colors, great starter pack, perfect weight for most papercraft projects
- Metallic Shimmer Assorted Set from Amazon – This set is a little lighter in weight but the colors are beautiful in 3D
- Cardstock Warehouse Brand on Amazon – I love the quality of all the matte colored cardstock with Cardstock Warehouse. It is my go-to brand for individual matte colors that I might need
- Stardream Metallics Line – For paper crafts, the Stardream line is the go to for a metallic shimmer finish. It is the perfect sheen to make any project pop. The core is also colored is which hard to find for metallic paper.
- Assorted Pink Set from Paper Paper – This is a must-have for paper flower makers. The variety is perfect to create a bouquet.
- Assorted Purple Set from Paper Paper – This is another must-have for paper flower makers. I love the variety of finishes in this pack.
- Metallic Variety Set from Paper Paper – I don’t know any avid paper crafter that doesn’t use Stardream metallics line of shimmer paper. It is the only metallic cardstock line that I know of that has such variety and has colored cores.
Glue – Spray glue probably works best but I don’t like to use that so here are some of my favorite other options for cardmaking:
Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.
Template – This entire set is free and available in my resource library.
Tutorial for Simple Cricut Cards
Step 1 – Cut the templates
Step 2 – Fold the base card.
I didn’t include a scoring line for this design because it is relatively simple and the line always confused a lot of Design Space users.
I got this nifty scraper with a velvet side from this transfer tape I purchased a while back. I just use that to smooth out the fold. Any scraper works though.
Step 3 – Spread a bunch of dots and thin lines of glue on the back of the top cutout piece.
Step 4 – Glue it in place. I like to put a book on it overnight if time allows.
That’s it!
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Thanks so much for posting this! I just got my Maker and am currently using the Happy Birthday template for my dad’s birthday. I decided to draw (write) on the other side to add another layer to it and it looks professionally made! THANK YOU! You’ve been a huge help.
Thank you! and great to have you 🙂
Great Cards. Just 1 question. Which font did you use on these cards…?
I think I started with an adobe font and made the alterations to make it more cutting machine friendly.