Children's Art Showcase Cards

It's Papercrafting Wednesday, this week on Tuesday! I'm posting this a bit early because the end the week is going to be all about our farm field trip and I wanted to post those in order. This week Kelli so showing us a great way to do one of my favorite things, incorporate old greeting cards into recycled projects! Getting a beautifully illustrated card in the mail is one of my favorite things; I just love seeing new artwork. The problem is what to do with them after I've enjoyed them? Check out Kelli's great card examples along with other fun papercrafting ideas at There is No Place Like Home!
So I was horribly late in sending out my 100th post giveaway to Sheila, and on top of that I realized this morning I spelled her name wrong most of the time! Geez, is that lame or what? I did however, contact her about the delay and I think the problem was she wrote back the magic words, "Take all the time you need and don't rush yourself," like how I shifted the blame☺

Part of the delay, was that once I found out one of my longest followers won I wanted to add a little something extra for her daughters, whom I read about all the time. Actually making said goodies is another thing entirely! So Sheila, in case you didn't get the comment I left you, spoiler alert!!!

As you know I am obsessed with incorporating my daughter's artwork into other things, so that all her hard work doesn't end up in the trash right away, Might as well get another use out of it, right? I've been tossing around the idea of these cards for awhile now. Here's how they turned out.

Begin with regular 8.5x11 inch cardstock for your card base. Fold in half. I have premade white envelopes that fit this size, that I bought in a huge box from an office store. I like this size because you don't have to trim your base and it's nice for this purpose because it gives you as large of a card to begin with as possible.

Do you like the inside message part I created using the fonts I got from Fonts 4 Teachers? I bought that years ago in CA and it's been so handy for creating activities for my students. They also have fonts that make traceable worksheets and ones with arrows to show your child the correct order in which to write the letters.

I thought Sheila's oldest daughter could use the lines to help her create a neatly written message. Of course she's a year older than I thought she was so she probably didn't need as large of lines but hopefully she won't think it's too babyish. I left the inside of the cards for the three year old blank, so Sheila can write the message for her.Go through your patterned paper scraps and choose some to use for this project. Adhere with glue stick. I have a ton of paper and surprisingly a bunch of large scraps, if yours are too small for this project remember you can always make this with them.

For a very basic version, you can stop here and just cut and attach your child's artwork to the front now. But of course, I can never stop with simple!

Cut mats for the front of your card but DO NOT glue down if you want to embellish more, and you know you do! Cut some art "canvases", mine are about half an inch smaller than the mats in both length and width. I cut these for Sheila's cards but you could just cut up a larger piece of art that your child has done too. My daughter at two and half makes abstract art so choosing the most interesting parts and cutting is fine. If your child is older and can make drawings of things like people and scenes than giving him or her actual paper canvases is probably best.To give you an idea of how the cards look when they are done here are some assembled. I embellished mine with ribbon. I cut a length of ribbon to go around the mat and tapped the ends under each side. I used regular scotch tape, because these are just for fun and don't have to be archivally safe like scrapbooks. Then I tied on a piece and cut it off once the knot was how I wanted it. Glue embellished mat to the front of the card. The ribbon is attached loosely so you can slip the finished piece of art work under the ribbon and attach to the mat. Now your artwork is "framed".

I realize these are not quite the same as scanning your child's artwork and then having cards printed onto them like you can do at Shutterfly, but these are much cheaper to make:)
In case you were wondering, the cards are not all wrapped up in the picture at the top. Inside of those are these princess frame kits I put together for each girl. All that's missing is the paint and a picture. The girls can paint them, add the princess foam stickers, and pop in a picture. I just put the other one at the top so just in case Sheila saw this post ahead of time, maybe the surprise wouldn't be ruined. BTW: the purple wired ribbon wrapped around the packages I got for two dollars at Costco a few days ago in the ginormous spool, such a steal!

I hope they enjoy creating both projects!