Cardstock

Cardstock is the collective name for paper with a weight that is thicker or heavier than standard copy paper, often subdivided with terms such as lightweight or heavyweight cardstock. Cardstock is used as a card base, due to its sturdiness.

White cardstock

For a lot of , a non-branded cardstock is good enough. Especially if you're going to glue elements on the front of your card.

A second benefit to white cardstock is that you can color your white paper in any color you want, with pretty much any kind of coloring medium.

Note that there are different shades of white, so keep that in mind when you want to use different types of paper on one card, such as gluing a small watercolor painting on top of a card base of a different type of paper.

Well-known brands and types

• Neenah Classic Crest Solar White Cover (297 GSM)
• Accent Opaque Digital Cover Smooth (325 GSM)
• Hammermill Smooth White Cardstock (271 GSM)

Colored cardstock

The benefit of using colored cardstock is that it often matches the colors of stamping ink of the same brand.

You can always darken your colored cardstock with a gray ink or a darker ink color in the same color family as your paper.

White core

Note that some colored cardstock is white cardstock that has the color printed on both sides (as opposed to paper that has the same color all the way through). This white core cardstock can be used for some cool such as sanding off bits after having run it through an embossing folder, or tearing off a bit exposing the white core.