Here's a delima I faced recently. I promised a set of six handmade thank you cards to every person who ordered above a certain dollar threshold on an online catalog. Sounded good until 14 people followed through! So there I was wondering what I could do that would be special, handmade but not take hundreds of hours and half my paycheck to accomplish. The answer was in front of me the whole time. It was CutCardStock of course!
I've been playing with watercolor lately and it occurred to me I could make small cards ( 3 x 3) with a splash of water color and then stamp an image on the top. It makes them a little out of the ordinary but would be a quicker way to make 84 cards. I remembered I had this cute little pig stamp from an old Stampin' Up set and I thought it would be just the thing for the project.
The next challenge was finding a source for nice quality but still economical cardstock for the project. Time was almost as important as money so I decided it would be best to find ready made card bases with matching envelopes. I found this was not inexpensive however. I checked a few online stores and my local big box stores and found that buying 85 3 x 3 cards with envelopes would have cost as much as $45 dollars and honestly, the quality was questionable. I like my cards to have good weight to them and be similar to cards you can get from a good stationer. The cards I found didn't have the weight on them which is usually a clue that they're light weight. And don't even start about the envelopes! Often they are really lightweight and flimsy.
The answer was of course to purchase everything from CutCardStock. I was able to purchase 100 3 x 3 gray cards with matching envelopes as well as the front panels I would water color for roughly half of what I would have paid for flimsy, plain white cards with no front panels.
Friends, CutCardStock has a large number of options when it comes to mass production of cards. You can customize sizes ready to go or have pieces cut and scored to meet your need using just about all the cardstocks available for sale. In my case, I purchased two packs of 50 ready-made cards and envelopes. I purchased a pack of 25 sheets of Royal Sundance Felt and used their custom cutting services to cut 84 2 3/4" squares to use as my front panel. The best of both worlds!
I recorded a video tutorial on how I mass produced my cards as well as how I made inexpensive but pretty packaging for the 14 sets of cards.
I started by mixing up pink watercolor and painting a quick splash of paint across all 85 white card panels. Once dry, I stamped all of them with my Tickled Pink stamp. I used a small Thank You stamp inside each gray card base and then I folded them all. That was the easiest part since they were already scored! Then I used adhesive to place each panel centered on the card base. Finally, I stamped a small pink flower on the envelope flap to make them just a little more special.
Once the cards were done, I next needed a packaging idea that would look nice but would mail easily and inside a small padded envelope. I decided to use glasine gift bags. For a closure, I used strips of wide glittered washi and dove tailed one end. Washi was perfect as it's a reusable closure that won't tear paper. In the middle of the strip, I glued a stamped thank you medallion made from Royal Sundance Felt. I am very pleased with the pretty look of this packaging. All in all, the thank you cards turned out even better than I expected. Challenge accepted and conquered!
Thanks,
Janet
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