Children love being creative, and no matter what the occasion, I have found that mine, in particular, enjoy designing their own greeting cards. In fact, it isn’t unusual for someone in this household to be presented with a stack like this on their special day:
Mother’s Day Cards – 2008
And with the holidays coming up, what better way to get children involved, than by allowing them to participate by making their own Thanksgiving or Christmas cards — or even their own stationery to give as a gift!
There are so many types of cards available. The only limit is the imagination of the child (and the search results on google) ;)! (I have included some of my personal favorite resources here, but I honestly have a bookmark folder overflowing with links.
Photo Cards
I mentioned in a previous entry that one great way to get children interested in writing is by allowing them to design their own photo cards, which can either be ordered from such online vendors as iPrint.com, Snapfish, VistaPrint, or ColorfulImages.com, OR you can make your own photo cards using your own home color printer.
HP Online has an entire page of card-related project tutorials and downloads to help get you started, and here is a great step-by-step photo card tutorial from PC World.
Free Printable Cards & Card Templates
Graphic Garden offers several pages of pre-designed “printables”, including stationery, note papers, greeting cards, and envelopes, while its sub-site, Art 4 Crafts contains lots of free graphics, templates, and patterns and project ideas (including several specifically for homemade cards and envelopes).
Other sources for FREE Printable Cards and Card Templates include:
- Alenka’s Printables
- Printfree.com
- Fisher Price (print & color cards for children)
- HP‘s free printable cards for almost any occasion
- Mint Printables
- Family Fun Birthday Printables
- Free Printable Post Card Templates from EasyFreePrintables.com
- SampleWords.com – a variety of printables, including pre-designed cards & invitations
- Mirkwood Designs – offers all kinds of unique paper-crafting templates for FREE. One of my favorite card template sites!
- Making-Greeting-Cards.com has card templates, printables, card-making tips, and techniques.
While this site seems to be geared more toward adults, it does contain a page on teaching simple rubber stamping to children — AND it has a few pages that we homeschool parents can use in any crafting situations — recipes for making lickable glue (for envelopes, that is), paste paper glue, and blender pen fluid refill.
My children enjoyed making their own pop-up cards,
using the free templates from Robert Sabuda.com
His templates are also great for homeschool projects!
Please share!
Do you have your own little artists? Leave a link and show us the fabulous cards they’ve created!
About Janne
