Last-minute Father's Day craft, or, A card no one throws away

You know how it is when you give someone a gift and feel the need to give the person a card too? Did you ever feel like skipping the card? Because you know it's just going to wind up in the trash. But with almost everyone I buy gifts for, cards are expected along with the gifts. So you spend $2-$5 on a card, attach it to your gift, and feel a little guilty about it because you know that money is just wasted and could have helped Bono fight AIDS in Africa or do a local deliberate act of kindness or something.

Anyway.

For Father's Day, I am giving JP a Snapfish photo book of digital scrapbook layouts featuring photos of him and Fly. Instead of a throwaway card to go along with his gift, though, I made a cool layered card using digital scrapbooking tools.



But wait! Don't stop reading yet if you're not into digiscrapping, because you can make this card the old-fashioned way too. You can make it for Father's Day or any occasion. And who's going to dare throw away a card you made?

To make my card, I used a template created by Sine, a digital scrapbooking template designer. It was a freebie template that's no longer available. But you'll see you don't even need a template. You can use an alphabet stencil or even go freehand.

First, I placed digital paper and photos of Fly on the template, then printed them out on regular office paper. You need a regular-looking letter and one that's backward for each layer.



If you are kicking it old school, you can just trace letters onto scrapbook paper, construction paper, wrapping paper or even newsprint. Spell out any word that you want. For each subsequent letter in your word, extend the look of the letter by about two inches. From the picture, do you see what I'm talking about?

Then, cut all the letters out. This is a good project for older children. In fact, older children could probably do this whole thing by themselves, with a little help.



After that, I traced each letter onto posterboard. The original instructions called for chipboard, but the original intent was to make an album, and I am just making a card.

This is a letter Y below. It's the last letter in the word Daddy, so it's the longest/widest.



Cut out the posterboard letters...





...and then you can glue the fronts and backs of the letters onto the posterboard. I used a humble glue stick.





If you are making your layered card without a computer, this is when you might want to add real photos, ribbons, buttons, flowers, or whatever else to decorate your letters. If I had been smart about this project, I would have put the pictures of Fly on the front of the letters, to the left, rather than across the back of the letters, as you've seen. So, that's an idea for another time....

Once everything is glued down, arrange your letters and spell your word!





I used a regular hole punch to put two holes in each letter, stacked them up and tied them together with yarn. You could use ribbon, twine, or whatever is lying around the house.



Oh, and on the last letter, you can write "Happy Father's Day" and sign the card.

For an even easier digital scrapbooking template, check out the "Father" word album from Scrap Girls. (I used Scrap Girls' Mischief Maker digital papers and embellishments to make this card.)

You could even scrap (hee hee) the idea that this is just a card and give this as a gift! Oh, uh, but then you might need to give a card....