There’s nothing like a pretty homemade card to convey your sentiments, whether it’s to express your love, tell someone you miss her or offer belated thanks for a holiday gift. And you don’t need to be an artist to create these easy collaged cards. Cut simple geometric shapes from the newspaper, glue them in a pleasing arrangement and you’re ready to pen your message.
To prepare, find areas in the paper that you’d like to use. Look for nice typography, colors, patterns or photographs. (Tip: Try to save The Times’s At Home and Kids sections, which always have gorgeous colors and illustrations.) Once you start collecting decorative pages to cut up, you’ll never look at a newspaper the same way again.
Materials
Pencil
Items to trace around, such as drinking glasses and coins
Scrap cardboard to make stencils (optional)
Stencils and/or craft punches (optional)
Blank cards, or heavy paper or card stock folded in half
Newspaper, both black-and-white and color pages
Scissors
Glue stick (or white glue and a paintbrush to apply it)
Marker (optional)
String, like baker’s twine
Step 1. Draw shapes on newspaper, using templates, stencils or trace items such as drinking glasses and coins. (To make your own templates, draw a shape onto scrap cardboard and cut it out. You can hand-draw shapes like hearts or find them online via image searches. Print out the shapes, tape them to cardboard and cut them out.)
Step 2. Cut out your shapes. Tip: If using a craft punch, insert newspaper as well as a sheet of plain paper (like printer paper) to keep the punch from catching and tearing the newspaper. You can cut your shapes into parts, like semicircles, and mix them up.
Step 3. Lay your shapes on the card. When you make a pleasing arrangement, adhere them to the card with a glue stick.
Step 4. To make the balloon card, punch or cut circles and glue them down. Attach string with little dots of white glue. Cut a small triangle and glue it to cover the spot where the string meets the circle.
Step 5. Tip for the crossword heart cards: Make a copy of the puzzle before you cut it up and then solve it with your Valentine.
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