Save Money with Homemade Cards

Saving money during retirement is always a good idea and one of my goals this year is to NOT buy a single card. Not for birthdays, Mother’s Day, thank you or anything else that comes along. Not even the 2/$1 cards at the dollar store. I still want to give cards, however, so will have to get creative and make my own.

Without further adieu, my first opportunity has arrived! With two grandsons having January birthdays, I obviously need two cards, right? So I made them today.

I have to admit that I used blank cards I got on sale for $4.99 just after Thanksgiving. In preparation for my 2010 card-making extravaganza, I actually bought a couple of boxes that contain 70 cards and envelopes each. I also have to admit that I already had a couple of boxes in a different set of colors that I bought last year, also on sale. So yes – do the math – I have about 280 cards on hand to embellish. This should get me by don’t you think?

I’ve also been saving all types of already-used cards over the past several years, planning to recycle them – and now I am! Finally! And I’m going to use fabric and ribbons and buttons and whatever else I can find. But for these first two, I played it safe.

The one with the deer combines a fabric square (the deer) with the front of a recycled note card. The other uses cute cutouts from an old birthday card (cheating, I know). As they’re both for boys, I used a sharpie to change the hot pink on the word Celebrate, one balloon and the party hat to red. So that’s two down and many, many more to go. Hopefully I’ll get braver and more imaginative as time goes by!