Making Your Own Cards at Home

I have plenty of blank cards (from craft stores) and card stock paper, a few frilly-edge scissors, some metallic pens, and 8YO twin girls who love to draw things - so card making is pretty simple for us :-)

You can get card stock from places like Staples, and Office Depot.

Personally I love using my local craft stores, I find the materials for scrapbooking embellishments to add to cards I do just a wonderful and personal touch.

I also love sights such as www.shutterfly.com and www.snapfish.com if I want to do some kind of photo based card and still add things to it. Also www.paperdirect.com has some card stock as well as decorated papers which work very well for all kinds of occasions and can be very budget friendly. I hope these suggestions help.

My mom has the Hallmark Card Studio software on her computer. They have a lot of different cards for different occasions and you can edit the text on them to fit your names, i.e. put in names, change "me" to "us", etc. She's used it for years.

Then she just buys a regular pack of white cardstock and a box of the appropriate size envelopes (half sheet).

I make many of my own cards.
I take a piece of 8.5 x 11card stock and cut it to 8.25 in length. I fold it in half... now it will fit in a business sized envelope.
Then I decorate the front and fill in the inside...
It's easy... it's great!
You can even make this card to be re-sent... For the innards, I put 4 photo corners to hold a separate piece of paper (8x4). Then I put the sentiment on that separate sheet. The receiver can take out that sheet and re-gift the card the same way.
I purchase most of my supplies on sale at Walmart, AC Moore, and Michaels.
YMMV
LBC

Go to www.americangreetings.com
I buy my card stock from walmart or sams club and then I buy the card envelopes from staples. In the long run it is alot cheaper then buying cards. I also like the fact that you can change the wording. Sometimes if I like the picture on one card and the words on another I would just swap them out.

You can buy the blank cards at Michael's store.

You can get some supplies at orientaltrading.com, but be careful because some of their stuff is really cheap. Don't buy their foam stamps.

Just yesterday I was cleaning out the craft box and my 13 yo said we used to make cards all the time, we should do it again this year. So x-mas cards will be homemade.

We used foam stamps and would paint the design and then press on the card. We would draw a snow man and then glue googlie eyes on it and glue on a felt hat. Use thin tipped markers for writing messages, crayola markers work just fine, no need to buy the expensive ones. I have some small paper punches that cut out fun shapes (stars, squiggles, ballons). The girls love using glitter, but it can get messy.

Have fun!

I have done mulitple different things for cards. Here are some suggestions.
-My daughter colored a very cute birthday cake with balloons. I bought some special cardstock from an office supply store (not Avery, but a competing brand) that was especially for printing up greeting cards. It was pre scored for folding. It came with envelopes, instructions an access to an online template for dropping the art in and printing. I printed up 5 (equals 10 cards) for future birthdays.
-If you don't want to mess with that, you can bring kid art into a place like Office Max and have them do all the work of getting two per page and printing onto cardstock. You just cut, fold and supply your own envelopes.
-In the past, I have taken pictures of my kids holding up big signs that either say "Thank" and "You" or "Happy" and "Birthday". Then upload to Shutterfly and you can easily follow the instructions to make gretting cards or note cards. You can also use there multitude of print frames and just order the prints only that way. They fit postcard style into note card envelopes.

Lots of options!

I use the poster board/construction type paper, cut using craft scissors and write my own words on it using unique pens. It's such a cool thing to do with your kids and it's so original.