Sunday, October 30, 2011

How to Make a Greeting Card

This year, I decided to make and mail Halloween cards to my family. For some unknown reason, I have saved quite a few calendars from past years... I guess I liked the art. My son's old super-hero calendar was perfect for Halloween cards.

Here's how to do it:


1. Choose a picture that can be folded so the focal point looks good on the front. Cut it so the folded card will fit in an envelope. I used 6.5" x 4.75" envelopes that I had on hand.


2. For the liner, get some nice paper that is heavy enough to cover anything that's printed on the back of the card's outer piece. Cut it to exactly the same size as the outer piece.

3. Fold each piece in half, individually.

4. Write your message on the liner. I used a brush marker, which has a long, pointed felt tip. You can make cool writing with these pens by giving a whoosh to each stroke in a letter.


5. Apply double-stick tape to the back of the liner on the fold and on the left and right edges. Try to get the tape all the way out to the edges, from top to bottom. This gives a unified card edge for the recipient to open.

6. Line up the folds on the outer card and liner, and press just the folds together. Then shut the card and smooth it out to stick the edges together.

7. With scissors, trim off any liner that shows on the outside of the card.

3 comments:

  1. Love it!! We always want to make Cards for folks but they had not worked out well. I think the double-sided tape is the answer!! Have you ever done the homemade envelopes? We use bright busy pages out of magazines, fold them into an envelope shape with some glue stick and they can be pretty cool to send.

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  2. Glad you like it. I made 5 cards, and those that I folded over before smoothing down the double-stick tape on the edges, worked out better.

    Gosh, back when I was an eco-teenager, I wrote letters on cut-up brown paper bags, folded them into envelope-shapes, taped 'em and sent 'em. That's a great idea about the magazine pages. That way, I can customize the envelope size to suit the art I choose for homemade cards... brilliant! How do you address the envelope? White sticky mailing labels?

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  3. Yup. I didn't really trust the addresses to a glue stick as much. We used to use ads from Rolling Stone magazine - what can I say. I'm an old hippie :).

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