Affordable Thank You Cards

Well, if you know anything about my life, you know that I have had ZERO time to be crafty lately. Most of my supplies and tools are still packed away in boxes, and there is so much to do, that I rarely have time to breathe, much less fun things. So, I'm incredibly thankful to my friend Brandi for agreeing to contribute to this blog. She is definitely at the top of the list of crafty people I know, and everything she makes is adorable. So, without further ado, here's Brandi's first post. Here's to many, MANY more!

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With baby showers and wedding showers comes the very daunting task of the thank you card. It's been a while since I purchased a package of them myself, having not needed a large amount in recent years. I've made due with just making my cards by hand in onesies and twosies. I just wasn't feeling it when it came to making my own thank you cards for the baby showers though, until I went shopping for some this week. $3.99 for an eight pack of thank you cards seems to be the going rate. Do you know how many thank you cards I'm going to need? I have two showers coming up and probably a string of random baby gifts that will find their way to us during our hospital stay and after she arrives. Basically, I'm going to need a lot. I decided that 100 would be enough to get by with, because I can always keep the extras for other things down the road. But 100 cards at $3.99/8 pack...that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $50.

Enter: compromise.

I went to Office Depot and purchased two boxes of the generic business-type thank you cards. One box contains 50 cards for $9.99. Then I raided my stamp collection and picked out a cute little baby carriage stamp. I stamped each card with the carriages in the bottom right-hand corner.Next I pulled out my Stampin' Write markers and started coloring. Stampin' Write markers are awesome. I have had my set for approximately 8 years or so and they are still just as wet and useful as the day I purchased them. They have two tips: one end for writing and the other is a brush-like end for coloring.I laid out 8-10 cards at a time and colored each batch differently so I wouldn't get bored, which gave me a nice variety.There. Thank you cards for my baby shower for $20 + tax. So far I've only stamped and colored 50 of the cards. After tomorrow's shower I'll see how many more I might need to do and go from there. Otherwise the rest of them are staying blank for now and will eventually be used for something.