Category: Paper

Handmade Cards

Paper, Pretty Packages



I’m working on being a better friend this year, and remembering birthdays is one of the way I intend to do it.  I also plan to make handmade birthday gifts this year for several reasons:  it allows me to be creative, it encourages to use my supplies and allows me to personalize gifts.  A box of handmade notecards was my first gift this year.

These notecards were made for an amazing friend, one who uses the art of the handwritten note liberally to bless the lives of others.  I wanted to make something she could use anytime she wanted to send a note in the mail.  I ended up going with ultra simple designs, letting them speak for themselves.


I was pleased with how the bicycle card turned out.  The stripes, the scallop edge and the image of a bike are all simple but happy.

I also made some little gift tags that can be used anytime, complete with baker’s twine and a little chevron bag to keep them in.


I bought a box for the notecards to fit in and personalized it on the front.


Then I tied the sets of cards with green and white twine and placed them in the box.  I like how it turned out and I hope that she likes them, too.  She is one of the best people I know.


A simple, but I hope a useful, birthday gift.  I finished the project with a birthday card and some ribbon.




What have you made lately?

Hopeful Homemaker

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Christmas Card Book

Christmas, Organization, Paper

I was so delighted to see this idea a few weeks ago.  I’m also someone who has a hard time throwing away Christmas cards because they’re such great snapshots of families we love.  It’s delightful to see how families grow each year, going from lots of little ones to lots of big ones.  Exchanging cards is one of my favorite parts of the season.  But if you save them, what do you do with them?  Now I have the solution.


What a great idea, to punch holes in your cards and put them on rings, then add a cover.  If you view the original post you’ll find downloadable covers that are super cute.  Since one of my goals this year is to do something creative every day, making my own was a great idea.


I used leftover paper from my Christmas cards last year, which adds a reminder of the card I sent out in 2011.   I tried my hand at some paper rosettes, which were REALLY fun.  I’ll be making more of those.


I am thrilled to know what to do with Christmas cards every January from now on.  We can get these books out from year to year and see how people have grown.  I’m glad that I can take these little pieces of my friends’ lives and preserve them in a way that encourages us to look at them in the future.

So, even though today marks one month since Christmas, I hope you’ll find it helpful enough to file away in your mind for 11 more months.   {This was a project on my January to-do list.  I’ve had the cards on rings for weeks, but hadn’t sat down to just make the cover.  Hooray for a finished project!}

I was thinking that this would also be a fun way to corral all those valentines that come home from school and then float around the house for weeks.  You could use just one ring and let each of your kids have a little Valentine flip book of their own!  Wouldn’t that be cute?

I hope your day is great.

Hopeful Homemaker

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Letterpress: My First Try

Paper

I asked for (and received from my husband with great assistance from my sister) the letterpress kit that works with an Epic six die cut machine for Christmas.

Yay!  I’ve wanted to try this for SUCH a long time.  I know that the “real” way is to get a vintage press and so forth, but I don’t have money to sink into a hobby right now, so this seemed like a pretty simple way to still try and enjoy it.

I stayed up late the other night to experiment and here is my first Letterpress project:


This was a lot of fun to make.  More of a process than I anticipated (compared to rubber stamps, I suppose) but really cool.  Funny, I don’t even like purple, but this purple with the rich, dark navy blue looks so great to me!

Much as I’d like to play all day, for now it’s a late night project; I don’t want to see what would happen if my toddler had any clue there were tubes of paint somewhere in my office.

I’m excited to make more.  Really excited.  {And it’s nice to have things to be excited about, don’t you agree?}

Hopeful Homemaker

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