Greetings card

Making close-up pictures of flowers using your digital camera’s macro option is fun all by itself, but I think it’s even better to design and make something useful, like the simple greetings card shown here. You will gain just as much pleasure from giving your own work away as the recipient gets, once they realise it's been hand-made.

So, take one flower. Stand it in a small bottle, on top of a matt white surface. This can be paper, card, or crease-free cotton or linen (get that ironing board out). Photograph the bloom from above, using the macro function to really get up close. Fill the frame, so that the flower itself hides all visible means of support. Work on a cloudy day, or in the shade, thereby avoiding those strong, dark shadows which direct sunlight would have cast onto the background.

Print the resulting picture on paper which is strong enough to stand up when you fold it. I used a cream coloured, slightly textured stock, folding it into quarters, but if you have thicker paper, simply fold it once, in half.

When you use your computer screen's "Print preview" menu, place the photo with the end product in mind.

You need no expensive software to make a card like this, and a small colour printer can be had for less than the cost of a set of replacement ink cartridges. Most standard office Word processing applications will allow you to insert, re-size, then accurately position a photograph onto a blank document. And if you really like a challenge, you could work out how to add text to the inside page. Hey, if you do get the bug, why not try out some different backgrounds?