CROCHET-STITCHES.COM

Cardmaking

Card stock for cardmaking and other craft uses comes in a wide variety of textures and colors.

Cardmaking is the craft of hand-making greeting cards. Many people with interests in allied crafts such as scrapbooking and stamping have begun to use their skills to start making handmade cards. This has contributed to cardmaking becoming a popular hobby.

Publishers have also been quick to cash in on the popularity in card making, with several monthly magazines in the US and UK devoted to the topic. There have also been over 150 books on handmade cards published (source: Amazon.com).

Traditional high street stores have begun to devote an increasing amount of their floorspace to handmade cards.[citation needed] Handmade products are now being seen by retailers as a way to increase margins, and handmade cards are no exception. This is particularly the case as mass-produced printed greeting cards have been faced with competition from electronic greeting cards. Over seven billion greeting cards were sent in the US alone last year; greeting cards are a multi-billion-dollar business.

In contrast, hundreds of small businesses have been set up by avid crafters keen to make a return on their cardmaking efforts. Many of these are taking advantage of the low setup costs of web-based selling and the wide customer-base of auction sites like eBay. Many others continue to sell their creations at craft fairs, markets and ftes. Others use their cardmaking skills to turn a profit in the wedding planning market making handmade wedding invitations and favors.

History

The custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls.

By the early 1400s, handmade paper greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. The Germans are known to have printed New Year’s greetings from woodcuts as early as 1400, and handmade paper Valentines were being exchanged in various parts of Europe in the early to mid-1400s.

However, by the 1850s, the greeting card had been transformed from a relatively expensive, handmade and hand-delivered gift to a popular and affordable means of personal communication, due largely to advances in printing and mechanization.

This trend continued, followed by new trends like Christmas cards, the first of which appeared in published form in London in 1843 when Sir Henry Cole hired artist John Calcott Horsley to design a holiday card that he could send to his friends and acquaintances. Technical developments like color lithography in 1930 propelled the manufactured greeting card industry forward.

During the 1980s, the trend began to turn, with consumers increasing looking for greeting cards that were differentiated from the standard offering. In the late 1990s the market was clearly beginning to separate in to three different segments:

handmade and premium cards

mass-manufactured cards

e-cards

See also

Arts and crafts

Greeting cards

Basic Card Making Equipment

Unique Handmade Cards

v  d  e

Decorative arts, handicrafts, arts and crafts

Textile

Banner-making  Canvas work  Cross-stitch  Crocheting  Curve stitching  Embroidery  Felting  Friendship bracelet  Knitting  Lace-making  Lucet  Macrame  Millinery  Needlepoint  needlework  Patchwork  Quilting  Ribbon embroidery  Rug hooking  Rug making  Sewing  Shoemaking  Spinning (textiles)  String art  Tapestry  Tatting  Tie-dye  Weaving

Paper

Bookbinding  Calligraphy  Cardmaking  Card Modelling  Collage  Decoupage  Embossing  Iris folding  Marbling  Origami  Papercraft  Papier-mch  Scrapbooking  Stamping

Wood

Cabinet making  Carpentry  Chip carving  Intarsia  Marquetry  Wood burning  Wood carving  Woodturning  Woodworking

Ceramic

Azulejo  Cameo glass  Ceramics  Glassware  Pottery  Stained glass

Metal

Metalworking  Jewellery

Other

Assemblage  Beadwork  Bone carving  Doll making  Dollhouse  Egg decorating  Engraved gems   Hardstone carving   Jewellery   Lathart  Lapidary  Miniatures  Micromosaic   Mosaic  Pietra dura   Pressed flower craft  Scrimshaw  Straw marquetry   Textile arts

Categories: Arts and crafts | Greeting cards | Paper artHidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from February 2010
About the Author

I am a professional editor from
China Suppliers
, and my work is to promote a free online trade platform.
http://www.frbiz.com/ contain a great deal of information about

aquarium strip light
,
marine spotlights

welcome to visit!

The Art of Crochet Advert