Cardboard Christmas Cards

I have an obsession with paper, something that comes naturally for someone who works at a newspaper no doubt.  I've always collected snippets of paper -wrapping paper, paper bags, tissue, cardboard- whatever I could get my hands on.  The trouble is always what to do with these bits and pieces.

This little quirk will no doubt make me your resident paper-craft expert at Scoop, and I see no reason to not start right now!

I made this card for my parent's anniversary, but it's an easy craft for any occasion.  I think this would be easily adapted to Christmas cards (think navy blue background with silver or gold stars).

It's also easy, so long as you aren't one of those kids that almost failed grade 1 because you couldn't use scissors (my sister is included in that special bunch).

1.  Choose paper for your cards.  I chose to recycle a pretty green-blue file folder from my office for the card and some old cardboard boxes for the cut outs.

2. Prep your materials.  If you're using cardboard you may want to peel back the top layer as I did to reveal the corrugation, it gives the shapes some visual interest.

3.  Cut out shapes.  I did this freehanded, to give the card a bit of folksy appeal.  Feel free to use a template if that's more your style.

4. Paint your shapes. I used red spray paint on my hearts, but craft paint (from the dollar store) or acrylic paint would work just as well.  Cardboard tends to absorb spray paint and anything watery, so if you want solid colour you may want to prime your shapes with white paint.  I liked the faded look of the red colour, and so I didn't worry too much about priming.

5. Arrange your shapes on the card. If you're making several cards in the same style it's nice to mix it up a bit, maybe vary the number of shapes on each to make each card unique.

6.  Glue those suckers on.  I used craft glue that I bought at the dollar store.  In retrospect, superglue would have been a better choice because you need to use a lot of glue to get cardboard to stick to thinner paper, and there was a bit of rippling after the card was dry.

7. Take out the dictionary (yeah- the one made of paper) that you never use anymore and place it on top of the shapes to hold everything down flat while the glue dries.

8. Create a space to write.  In the interest of recycling as much as possible, I used one of my outdated business cards from when Tara was still kicking around Antigonish, as a writing space.

9.  Don't judge my atrocious handwriting. It's the product of four years of furious note-taking.


Posted by: Jean