Homemade Cards

I love making my own birthday/thank-you/congrats/hello cards. It's easy and you can make them so much more personal. You also have complete control over what's written on the inside. I hate finding a greeting card with a perfectly cute outside and a painfully cheesy inside.

My most recent card project was some quick and easy banner cards.

To start, I covered my card stock with a paper that I liked (glue stick time!).

Then I stamped and cut out each letter and glued them to a larger square of a different color. Other shapes might look nice too, triangles, circles, whatever. As you can see I didn't try that hard to make perfect squares. I think it looks more fun this way.  

Then I just hot glued a piece of embroidery thread (you could use any kind of string or yarn or ribbon)  on both ends of the card. Hot glue the letters along the thread and you're finished! Well, I also added a little picture to each.

If you don't have stamps, you could write or paint the letters--or even cut them out of a magazine. Make sure to play around with the letter placement before you start gluing. I always think I'll have more room than I do.

I also like to add a little something on the inside of the card too. These adorable cupcake stamps seemed appropriate for the birthday card.


 

Other card suggestions?

It's always nice to have a little 3-D action. For some thank-you cards I made last winter, instead of stamping the thank-you directly onto the card, I cut out little pieces of paper to hang from a piece of thread.

 These cards were way late, so I hung them from the necks of some homemade snails.

And again, I thew in a little something on the inside. 

I also like to color the edges of the paper by dragging them along an ink pad or the tip of a marker. You can see this along the blue paper with the bird stamp. See how it just creates a little extra contrast between the two pieces of paper? Running a piece of string or strip of paper around the border would be nice too.

Also, think about creating texture by wrinkling paper or using scalloped scissors.

And have fun with different types of materials: buttons, ribbon, tissue paper, sequins, flowers, etc. But do remember that if your cards stick out too much (buttons/beads) you won't be able to mail them in a regular envelope without them being ripped up in the post office machines. 

And don't think you need fancy supplies either (though some are helpful). Just see whatever you have lying around the house first. Have fun! And make sure to turn on some trashy TV while you're doing all of this.