Frugal Greeting Cards

16
Written by Fawn
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My basic card making tools.

My stash of home-made cards was getting pretty low, but I have been waiting to make more. The librarian at our local library told me that she clears out the circulating magazines at the end of the year and they are offered first come, first served to the general public. She even offered to reserve a few for me!

 

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I requested two copies of these three titles, because I thought they would have good pictures.

And they did not disappoint! I cut out any photo or illustration that appealed to me. I had purchased a package of 25 blank note cards with envelopes from the local craft store. They were on sale for $5 USD. Based on the size of the note cards, I created a cardboard template from a empty cereal box. I used the template to crop and frame the pictures I liked in a way that appealed to me.

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I just move the template around until I have an interesting frame of the image and I mark inside the template with a pen.
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Here you can see my template marks, ready for cutting.
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Most of the cards are made from a single cropped image, but a few are collages, like this one.
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26 varied, beautiful, handmade cards created for 20 cents each! Honestly, I like these way better than what I can find in the shops.
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I did not make these cards today, but the exact same process applies to making holiday cards.

Any two dimensional image can be used. For past cards I have used antique photos, old calendars, used greeting cards, magazines, interesting tags that came on purchased clothing, parts of a playbill, a politically incorrect children’s book that the library was giving away.

I have a file folder where I collect interesting images for this purpose. When I have enough, I buy the blank note cards and get busy!

16 Comments

      1. I may try this idea with my old hanging calendar from 2019. It has a verse on it and a nice background. As long as the paper is not too thin, I may have success.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. I have done this before but forgotten about this. I tend to keep old cards (Christmas, birthdays, etc) but when I want to thin them out, I can reuse the images as a new card or postcard. Ditto for the magazine images like you have here. Thank you for the reminder!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Yeah, it is definitely not my idea—it’s been around since….paper, but the template helps me see images in a new way and makes the process more fun!

      Like

      Reply

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