Nice & Easy 'Thank You' Cards
All crafters will know the rush before Christmas to get cards made (find my super simple Christmas card tutorial here) but there is also a rush after Christmas to make 'thank you' cards. I’m sure you will have received some really wonderful gifts and I always think a nice way to thank people for their generosity is to put some effort in and create a beautiful card to send them. My problem is this; if I want to make a card for everyone, I’m going to need to make a fair few and that means I need a design that I can repeat quickly and easily. This is especially relevant for anyone who, like me, has their birthday near Christmas too. So, I took some of my Christmas money to Hobbycraft, bought some really lovely things, and came up with this minimalistic, sophisticated design.
Here’s what you’ll need…
Blank white cards
Your favourite large, picture stamp (here’s the one I used)
Coloured ink pad
A ‘Thank You’ stamp (I used one from this collection)
Black ink pad
Ribbon
Patterned paper (I used paper from this pad)
White card
Mini gem embellishments
A pencil
A compass
A craft knife
A ruler
Scissors
Sellotape
Step One: The most complicated part of this card is making the tag for your ribbon. If you’re lucky and have a die-cutting machine, this card just got even easier for you. If you’re like me and are saving up for a die-cutting machine, you need to make your own tag. First off, stamp your ‘thank you’ greeting onto a piece of white card in black ink. You need to do this first so that you can make sure your tag is the right size.
Step Two: Take your pencil and compass and draw curves around your stamped greeting, making sure you give a little bit of space at either side. Then, take your ruler and draw two straight lines above and below your stamped greeting. Cut out this shape. If you’re going to be making lots of cards, I’d use this as a template to draw and cut out as many tags as you need.
Step Three: Place your greeting onto you patterned paper of choice and place you compass in the same place as you did in step two. Push the pencil slightly further out and draw some more curved lives around your tag.
Step Four: This is where you have to kind of make it up a little. Making sure that you’re leaving a little bit of space from your white tag, draw a couple of small, straight lines coming in from either side of your curves. Use your ruler to work out the midpoint of these lines and then draw two curved lines meeting at this midpoint like I’ve done in the picture below. Cut out the shape that you’ve created and, if you’re making lots, use this as a template for more.
Step Five: Cut two thin slits with your craft knife in your patterned paper tag. Make sure you position them so that they can be covered up by your white paper tag. You don’t need to be too exact about this, nobody is going to see them.
Step Six: Put your tag aside for now and cover your chosen picture stamp with your coloured ink. Carefully position it on a blank white card and press down hard. You only get one shot at this because you’re stamping directly onto your card.
Step Seven: Wrap your ribbon around the back of the card so that the two loose ends are in front. Thread the two ends of your ribbon the slits on your patterned paper tag, cut the ends down to size and stick them down with a little bit of sellotape.
Step Eight: Glue your stamped, white paper tag on top of the ribbon ends.
Step Nine: For the final touch, glue on three mini gems in a horizontal line under your ribbon on the right hand side of the card. That’s it! Now, if you've used your tags as templates and drawn out a load more tags, you can churn out several cards in just a couple of hours!
I hope you had a fantastic Christmas and have received some wonderful presents to warrant sending out 'thank you' cards! Remember to post any pictures you have of the cards you make on Instagram or Twitter and tag me in them so I can see - @mindofabadger