Chuck and I always fill our November and December with far too many events and chores. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to get presents mailed in time, much less cards to four times as many people. Borrowing a cue from Julia Child in her autobiography My Life in France (wonderful read!), we decided that we will start in on the tradition of sending Valentine's Day cards instead of holiday cards. This way, we have plenty more time in the relatively calm month of January to get this task going.
This year - our first - here's what we did:
We bought 8x11.5 kraft paper made of post-consumer recycled content (cannot remember the %) and matching envelopes at the local Paper Depot. We cut the paper into quarters. Then we cut apart our wallet-sized photo prints (easily ordered from SnapFish)...
Once we had the pieces prepped, we used our handy-dandy guide - made from a scrap of paper cut to size for the notecards and then cut out to slide a photo in perfectly centered - to tape the photo down with double-sided tape.
We stamped our "Happy Valentine's Day" message in red ink, signed the back, and mailed them off with another stamp (I just couldn't resist at Paper Source) and our Three Designing Women return address stamp on the back!
All-in-all, a relatively simply project that even the hubby could help with (unlike our DIY wedding invitations, which were 95% female-assembled)!
...So with that said, Happy Valentine's Day!
xoxo, sarah