Another year, another post summarizing my cardmaking! Making annual posts with my handmade cards has become a tradition now, and I couldn’t miss it. It’s also great for myself, having all my cards documented here every year. They serve as a fantastic source of inspiration too when I need it.

So, without further ado, let’s have a look at the cards I made in 2023.

Starting, as always, with the card I made for Grandmother’s Day, celebrated on January 21st in my country. I went for a pretty standard design of quilled flowers.

Next up was my Dad’s birthday in March. I went for something a little bit different – I made an origami shirt out of chequered scrapbooking paper and attached a few tiny real buttons. Some balloons on the side, and voilà! The quilling-origami card was complete.

May 26th was Mother’s Day in Poland, and another quilling card. I went with a lotus flower design for that occasion. Frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about it – didn’t turn out exactly how I planned it to and I feel like it’s missing something. Just don’t know what exactly. Oh well.

June has not one but three cardmaking occasions for me – both my Grandma and my sister celebrate their birthdays that month, and June 23rd is Father’s Day.

For my sister, I usually go with a more personalised design. Unlike the rest of my family, she’s really easy to find unique ideas for. This time, I was inspired by our family cat. He is our baby and an apple in everyone’s eye. And we always find it funny how he freezes immobile when you catch him doing his grooming yoga, with his tongue still sticking out and eyes wide open. So cute and hilarious! I thought it would make a funny card design. Paired with a bunch of balloons, the card was birthday-ready.

The card for my Grandma was an opportunity for me to remember why I rarely go with 3D flowers for my cards. Although they look pretty cool and stand out, assembling them is a real challenge! I’m yet to find a good method for it. I managed to make it work in the end, but boy was it time consuming and frustrating at times!

For Father’s Day, I came up with this shamrock design. As I mentioned many times on this blog, I always struggle with non-feminine cards (and I don’t want to shower my dad with girly cards, ha!). Luckily, it just so happened this year that I needed to prepare all the cards in advance in March. I went online to look for inspiration and saw a ton of shamrock designs. After all, it was St. Patrick’s Day! A four-leaf shamrock is a symbol of luck in Poland, and I thought it would make a good Father’s Day card. I’m really pleased with the outcome.

Finally, last – but certainly not least! – was a card for my Mum’s birthday in July. I decided to go with a somewhat minimalistic design with a hollow flower as the centerpiece. It came out pretty neat if you ask me – definitely satisfied with the outcome.

And that’s it, folks! The summary of my 2023 cardmaking shenanigans. As always, my family appreciated the effort put into the handmade quilled cards, and I enjoyed the process of making them. I’ll be sure to recap my 2024 cardmaking next year.

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