CHEAP and EASY thank you cards

     Seeing as it is already the second week in January, this topic may be a little late… Hopefully you and your kids already sent out thank you cards for all the Christmas presents received at your home, but sometimes our hopes are little more ambitious than real life! We just sent ours out today. There’s still time! “BETTER LATER THAN NEVER” is great to remember especially when it comes to expressing gratitude.

     The cards we make at our house are CHEAP and simple. Our budget is tight and we can’t buy a package of cards every time we need them. The nice thing about CHEAP is it means homemade and homemade means they look a lot more thoughtful to the person who receives it. 

     Most of these steps can be done ahead of time, so if there is a little one’s birthday coming up, get started now and you’ll have thank you cards ready to go!

     Target sells 200 blank cards with envelopes for $9.99 in stores. They are 4 by 5 ½ inches and are one sheet (they don’t open up like a typical card). They come in bright, neutral, and pastel colors. I like the bright-colored cards; and think they go particularly well with “kid art.”

 
     My son loves to paint so we paint probably two times a week. Most of the time we work on a project: his color book, mixing colors, or painting letters. But when he’s finished, I let him paint whatever he wants. I save these “masterpieces” and some I will keep forever, but others I cut up and use for cards!

     After his extra paintings dry, I make sure and leave them under a couple of dictionaries (Strong’s Bible Concordance works REALLY well) overnight so they are nice and flat. I then save them in a file folder.

     Do you have a show you like to watch after your little ones are in bed? For me, Dateline night is the perfect night to work on this project… and now I get to add Downton Abbey night as well!

     So get out the file folder and some scissors and park yourself in front of your show and cut out shapes from the paintings. If you are blessed enough to own some kind of die cutting machine it will be even easier for you! I even have a few card stock templates I use to trace such as different kinds of flowers.

     Put the shapes in an envelope and the next time you have a thirty or more minutes of wait time or TV time get out your glue stick and glue them on one side of the cards. You can layer the shapes for a cute look. I put these finished cards with a matching envelope back in the box with the black ones for safekeeping.

 
     When you need a thank you card, you have some ready! I like to let my son “sign” the back with his adorable scribbling after I have written a specific note.

     For Christmas I made a set of blank note cards for each grandmother using this same method. I was surprised that they made such a cute gift!
  

Hope you have fun! 
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