If you are looking for homemade card ideas you can make with your Cricut then my card making series is the perfect place to start! I will show you how to make basic cards along with some of the more detailed, fancy 3D cards.

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Types of Cards

Below is a list of some of the various homemade card ideas I will share with you over this series. You can click on any of the links below to take you to the tutorial for that specific style of card. I will start off with some easy homemade cards, and then we will work our way gradually into some more challenging and dimensional homemade card ideas for you to explore.

There are so many different handmade card making ideas and styles that we will be exploring. As I create a tutorial or video for each style of card, I will link it to the list below. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow my Card Making BINGO playlist!

Additionally, for many of these cards you can use my Cricut Project files. I will also link those below. Make sure to Follow my Cricut Design Space Profile to see all of my projects! I made a video HERE to show you how to do that!

I will also be showing you some different techniques to add more interest and depth to your cards such as

SVG files for Easy Homemade Cards

Since the time that I originally made this post, I have actually started to design my own SVG files for the various cards I make. You can find all of my SVG files for sale in my Shop. Let me know if there is a theme or card style you are looking for! Maybe your requests will become my next card making inspiration!

Below are just a sample of my homemade card ideas and SVG files. The first product below gives you the direct link to 18 different card project files that I have all ready and set up for you in Cricut Design Space.

Supplies for Making Cards

At the very minimum, when you are making cards with your Cricut you will need some good cardstock. If your card involves a design with layers of colors or patterns, you will need some sort of glue or adhesive to secure those pieces and layers to each other. To make shopping easy for you, I have put a few suggested product into a shopping list that can be found in my Amazon store.

Another GREAT resource for cardstock is 12 x 12 Cardstock Shop. I am currently on their Design Team which means that I have a special coupon code you can use! Just enter Coupon Code SHAWNM10 to save 10% off your order!

There are additional tools and supplies that are nice to have when making cards, such as the Cricut scoring stylus or scoring wheel. These tools will allow the Cricut to place a scoreline, which is the crease or fold line of the card. I also like to use a bone folder to help me get a really good crisp fold on my scorelines.

The Cricut pens are another nice tool to have for making cards. I like to use the pens to write on my cards, and I did a full tutorial about that process that you can read HERE.

Another items that is often considered a supply for card making are SVG files. These are pre-made designs that you can upload so that you can quickly and easily make your cards. If you have never used a SVG file you should read through the information HERE. I have started to design some of my own SVG files, and you can find the ones I am selling in my Shop.

Easy Homemade Card Ideas

If you are looking for an easy homemade card idea, I suggest that you start with a basic or Slimline card. I have a tutorial HERE for those that you can follow along with. If you are looking for handmade card making ideas, I highly suggest checking out my Pinterest board. I even dedicated one board just to easy homemade cards that you can make with scraps of cardstock that you might have left over from other projects, and created a brand new board!

While creating the information for this card making series, I wanted to keep things simple and consistent. That is why you will see me use the shape of a star as the embellishment for my cards over and over again. I really wanted to show that even when you use the same shape, by changing out the colors and papers you can create a totally different look to your cards. I also saved this basic card as a Cricut project file, so if you want to open it in Design Space and save a copy to your own account you can do that by clicking HERE.

Otherwise, you can create your own basic card by using the Free Shapes in Cricut Design Space and using the measurements that I show in the image below. Follow my directions HERE for how to insert a square, resize it, then insert and attach a scoreline. After that, you can create the top front layer piece by inserting another square and making the dimensions match those found in the image below. Last but not least, add the star for an embellishment from the Shapes button in Cricut Design Space.

Again, if you need a really detailed step by step head over to my cardmaking tutorial HERE. I even have a video on creating cards that you can watch HERE.

Make sure that each element in the card is a different color. When you click Make It in Cricut Design Space this will tell the Cricut to put each of those elements on a different cutting mat. This will help you to easily know which color of cardstock to put on your cutting mat and load into the Cricut.

In the photos below you can see how I used the basic layout and design from the card I showed you how to create above. Then in the second photo you can see how I added some extra embellishments to the same card. This gives the card more pop! And if you are playing along with our #CardMakingBINGO game these cards would mark off two boxes since it is a basic card and I inked the edges of my large star shape. There is a video for this process on my TikTok.

In the next photo you can see that I used this same handmade card idea and just changed out the colors and papers that I used. All four of these cards use the same layout I showed you above, but you can see by just changing the papers they turn out very different.

Since a Slimline card is just a variation on a basic card, I am also going to include the measurements for that here. Just follow the same steps you followed for the card above, but use the measurements in the image below. If you would like to just use the exact same file that I created below, I have that saved as a Cricut project file that can be accessed HERE.

In the photo below you can see that I did one Slimline card as a horizontal card, and I turned the second one to be a vertical card.

Easy Homemade Card Tips

Once everything is cut, you just have to put the pieces together. First I would fold the card base in half, to help you more clearly see the fold for placement of the top front layer. I like to use a tape runner that has double sticky tape in it so that I can roll that across the back of the pieces and easily stick them in place.

If you find that some of the cardstock that you used for your card has a white core to it, which means that the color does not go all the way through the cardstock, you can do something called inking your edges. You can use a marker or an ink pad to do this. Simply run the marker or ink pad along the edge of the cardstock to hide the white edges. Below is a short video I did showing this process.

@shawnmosch #cardmaking #papercraft Use a marker to ink the edges of your cardstock shapes #learnontiktok ♬ This Is How We Do It (Album Version) – Montell Jordan

Another thing I like to do when making homemade cards is go through my stacks of cardstock and find all of the pages that have an assortment of sayings or phrases on them, like the one in the image below. I can then cut these phrases apart and use them on my various cards.

Add Writing to your Handmade Cards

If you would like to learn to add text that is written with the Cricut pens to your cards, make sure to read my article that will teach you to Write with Cricut Pens. You should also learn the difference between a Writing Font and a Cutting Font. If you want to learn how to “trick” your Cricut into coloring in and filling a font that is open in the center or looks like bubble letter, you should check out my article on How to transform your Cricut Fonts.

Easy Homemade Card Inspiration

I hope that this helped you learn how to make a basic card and a slimline card, and that you can see how easy it is to change out the look of a card by just changing the papers that you use. This can also help you to speed up the process of making cards since you can keep repeating the same shapes and ideas over and over!

Sharing our homemade card ideas online is a great way to inspire others. I always love to see the variations on the same card idea that others come up with. If you want to quickly find all of the cards I have made for ideas and inspiration you can click HERE.