Note Cards with Flair

I love making cards with my leftover scrapbooking supplies, especially note cards. Even with e-mail and cell phones, I'm one of those people that never abandoned communication via the U.S. mail service. As much as I like opening my in box and seeing an e-mail from a friend, there is nothing like finding an unexpected envelope in my real mailbox, addressed to me in a familiar hand. I figure that other people enjoy surprises as much as I do, so I like to send notes and cards to family and friends. I'm pretty big on written thank-you notes, as well. I know, I know, I'm old-fashioned. I get e-mailed thank-you's from my young adult nephews, and I'm fine with that, but nothing can capture the charm of a handwritten thank-you. So when it's my turn to write the thank-you, you won't find me using e-mail. Besides, making cards is a great use of paper scraps and embellishments that I have left over from scrapbooking. Reuse, recycle, be green, and all of that.

The picture above is a few of the cards that I made recently. I love the dollar bins at Michael's, and I often find perfect card embellishments there. All of the 3-D embellishments on the cards in the photo came from the dollar bin, and I used dollar bin stamps from Studio G on both the green card and the pink and yellow card with the hearts background. The Studio G stamps are small, so they're just perfect for cardmaking. Oh, for the background of the green card, I ran a piece of white-core cardstock through an embossing machine using the Cuttlebug "Swiss dots" embossing folder. After the dots were embossed, I sanded the outside of the card so that the white core of the cardstock would show through a bit. I love the way it came out.

Ok, the ADORABLE pumpkin card is NOT my design. Yeah, I wish! In fact, it was designed by Kristina Werner and it, along with two other great cards, constituted the September version of her free online class, A Year in Cards. You can get the instructions and the downloads to make all three uniquely-shaped Halloween cards here: Halloween cards. As soon as I saw that pumpkin card, I knew I had to make it. It came out so cute that I decided to make up little kits and do the card as a make-and-take at my scrap group's October crop. Just a note if you decide to make some -- if you position the pieces carefully, you can get two entire cards from one 12x12 sheet of pumpkin-colored cardstock.


As you can see, my pumpkin cards didn't turn out exactly like Kristina's, but that, of course, is the wonderful thing about paper crafts -- you can make them your own. I sent a few of these as note cards, but in addition to making perfect Halloween and "just because" cards, I thought this design would also make a fantastic Thanksgiving card. You could change the greeting to say "Happy Thanksgiving" or maybe "Give Thanks," and add a meaningful quote inside. I'm also toying with the idea of reducing the size of the .pdf download on a copy machine, and using the reduced size design to make place cards for my Thanksgiving table. The white banner would have each person's name on it. How cute does that sound? Ok, right now I'm working on Christmas gifts for my sisters, but if I end up doing the place cards, I will definitely post a picture.

So, the moral of this post is, be green and use your paper scraps and extra embellishements to make some cute note cards and thank you cards that just might make someone else's day.