Scrap Paper Thankyou Cards

It snowed today! Brr! Definitely the sort of weather to stay indoors and try to catch up on my correspondence, and as I've got lots of thankyou notes to write I thought I'd make a few thankyou cards...

All these cards were made with scrap bits of paper leftover from my Christmas wrapping, plus a few lovely papery bits from Bombus Craft. I deliberately mixed more "bling" shiny, sparkly papers with more muted textures like brown paper.

They're all a variation on a simple structure:
1) two or three vertical strips of paper (use a ruler to get them as straight as possible!), slightly overlapping to produce one solid "ribbon" of paper
2) three or four circles of paper arranged vertically (I used a circle stencil for cutting these, but you can draw round anything small and circular like little tubs of makeup or small glasses)
3) a nice festive embellishment to sit in the centre of the circles, like these little Christmas trees I cut out from some giftwrap:

 

First stick down your vertical strips, then add the row of circles and finish with the embellishment. Cut your strips too long for the card you're using, and only trim them down when you've stuck everything in place so you can make the edges flush and super-neat. Either arrange everything to be slightly off-centre, as I've done with this card which I topped with map trees from Bombus Craft...

 

... or make everything symmetrical as I've done with this one:

 

The lovely snowflakes (from Bombus Craft again) were so nice that I skipped the circles altogether, and used a bit of an old map in the background to match them nicely. Patterned scrapbooking paper would work similarly well, as would nice patterned Christmas wrap - the basic design of these cards is so simple that a bit of detail and pattern goes a long way!

You can also use some special - or extra sparkly - paper for circles that themselves become the embellishment. On this card I used lovely bright red foil from a biscuit in a Christmas selection box:

 

To make the best use of foil chocolate & sweet wrappers, flatten the foil carefully and then glue it onto a piece of plain paper. The paper backing helps give the foil some strength and makes it much easier to work with.

I also adapted these designs and made some postcards, topped with simple circles cut out from some rather fancy wrapping paper. I made the postcard base from a bit of white card, covered on one side with brown paper and with the corners slightly rounded...

 

... I know you can get punches for cutting lovely neat curved corners but I just cut mine with scissors. I used a bit more of the giftwrap to make a matching envelope (giftwrap envelopes are a sure-fire way to jazz up your post whilst using up leftover paper!)

The finishing touch inside each card is the thankyou itself - again, these are simple strips of paper with an embellished circle on top, to match the front of your card: just remember to include a white strip of paper for 

writing your "thankyou!" 

 

If you've already written your Christmas thankyous, these can easily be adapted to be a bit less festive - they're a great way to use up odd leftover bits of paper & giftwrap all year round!

Please feel free to borrow photos if you want to blog about this project, but remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my entire tutorial on your site. Thanks!

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