I volunteered to make 10 birthday and 20 encouragement cards for Cards for Cubs and in the end, made 15 birthday cards and 20 encouragement cards, so I was happy with my outcome. If you would like more information about Cards for Cubs, where we make handmade encouraging and birthday cards for kids in foster care, here’s the link to their organization. https://cardsforcubs.org/

Unfortunately most of the papers and ribbons I used on these cards have been retired, but it was a great way to use up many of them.

I used scraps of paper that I cut to 2″ tall by 5 1/4″ wide. This allowed for 1/4″ between the two papers for ribbon, die cuts, or more paper scraps in a width up to 1/2″ by 5 1/4″ to fill the gap and overlap both the top and bottom papers.

I started with old Michaels card bases that are A2 size, 5 1/2″ wide by 4 1/4″ tall, and inked the edges of them, as most of the bases had a weird mountain on the bottom of the card front…So in order to use them, if the mountain was green and I had green scraps, I inked the edge with a green that would match the scrap paper about 1/2″ all the way around the front of the card.

The card I made on video started with one of the Michaels card base that I covered with tear tape and removed the backing so the whole front was sticky. I had scraps leftover that were 1 1/4″ wide by 4 1/4″ tall (after I ran out of the 2″ wide scraps I used for most of the cards I made.) Then I started on the right side and laid the first scrap from top to bottom against the right side of the card base, then butted the next scrap up to it, and then did the same until all scraps covered the front of the card. I used some old Martha Stewart wet glue (I bought at Tuesday Morning a long time ago) when I needed additional glue for these cards. Since the last piece hung over the edge, I took my Fiskars Guillotine trimmer and cut from the back to remove the excess, and then to make the right side strip match the left side end strip, I cut about 3/4″ off the right side of the card to make both ends look the same. I took three pieces of 2″ square black pieces of scrap card stock and glued them on top of each other, then took a piece of cream scrap and cut it to 1 3/4″ square and stamped Brutus Monroe black ink with an old Happy Birthday stamp from Hero Arts in the center, then glued the cream scrap to the black scraps. I glued the sentiment to the left side near the top and then added some enamel dots to it.

I used Stampin’ Up Pleated satin ribbon on a few of the cards in different colors…here are some links to it on ebay, as it’s retired. https://tinyurl.com/3wfff47v

I made cards with black and white smaller scraps and attached a video showing you how to make these types of cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrAcOpQcc2k&t=42s

I was happy with the cards I made as I wanted them to all be a little bit different from each other even though I used the same concept of using two scraps that were each 2″ tall and 5 1/4″ wide and laid one above the other, then adding something to the center to make it more interesting. If you can’t tell, I spend a lot more time and energy on the encouragement cards than on the birthday cards, as I truly believe these kids deserve really special encouragement.

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