I don’t know about you, but I ALWAYS forget to buy cards.  I should clarify, BC (before children) I NEVER forgot cards.  I sent cards like I was the VP of Hallmark.  It was a card-a-polooza in my mailbox.  I’d go into stores with an entire list for the month.  I’d lay them out on my desk via the week they should hit the mail.  I kept a stack of pet sympathy cards in my stash, you know, just in case. GOOD LORD was I ever bored.

Then I entered a far more interesting phase of my life known as AD (after delivery).  Cards?  What?  Who?  I couldn’t remember to pick up a card if my life depended upon it.  Thank you notes are easy because I keep all sorts of random stationery in my Mommy closet.  But any other occasion, and I’m pretty much out of luck.  And then God invented the Cricut, and so…there you go.  But seriously guys, a Cricut is overkill on this project.  A pair of scissors, a pencil, and a ruler would work just as well.

I’d like to use triangles, but I don’t have a cartridge for it, so I cut rectangles and made them into chevrons.  I marked the center with a dot and cut up into it.  I can’t eyeball worth a darn.  I printed the message on the bottom right quadrant of card stock (I always have white card stock…priceless), and tried to get the ink to match a pennant.  I then used my paper cutter to trim the pages to a nice size (=whatever fits the envelopes I have on hand), and I folded. I laid the flags down where I thought they should go, traced the tops with a pencil, asked Kelly to throw down a black marker, and made the “ribbon”.  Laid the pennants down again, and glued them down, one by one.  I usually work outside in, so any spacing snafoos could be smoodged together.  I am a horrible free-hander, but amazing smoodger.

I can cut a hundred rectangles in minutes, and I keep them together in my paper storage drawers.  I own this one, which isn’t beautiful, but does its job. I like how the pennants fly off the cards.  I don’t like feeling constrained by dimension.  And if you want to know how I get the colors to coordinate in my big mess of paper, I buy coordinating packs.  I usually have leftovers from the girls’ birthday parties, because it’s easy to be cute when someone matches all the colors for you!

So, in short, a card like this can be made in about 15 minutes, usually with stuff you probably have, and that’s a good 45 minutes faster than you could run to Target and spend $4.00 on a card.  WHICH, will cost you $204, because if you go to Target, you’ll find some candles on clearance, a new organizer for your desk, that birthday present you forgot to buy your niece, a work out outfit you can’t live without….

I just saved you $204.  You’re welcome.