Tuesday 4 January 2011

Greeting or Easter cards from old calendars

I thought to come up with an idea so that you can do something pretty with your old calendars.
It's such a shame if you just chuck them away!
Instead of throwing them in the bin , you could use them to make gorgeous greeting , Valentine's or Easter cards- here below you can see how it is done.
Start with some white card, about A3 size which you fold double and double again as below, just as you see as cards are done which you buy in a shop.( Here below).
Then,find some silhouette shapes of bunnnies if you want to do Easter cards-- find heart-shapes if you want to do Valentine's-cards)
 If you are confident at drawing , you can draw the silhouette freehand.
Otherwise, have a look on the internet for copyright free images.
Cut the silhouette out of card with scissors and use the left-over card which has the shape cut out as a template.

Get a calendar with a page which has colours you like.
In this case, I chose a picture of yellow and orange tulips, which gave me Easter colours ( yellow   ).
Put your template on top of your coloured picture and draw the shape ( of the bunny )  inside the template, following the edges of the template with a pen or pencil like below.
Choose where you draw so the shape is filled with the colour you want.
You may need to move the template around a bit for this.

Cut the shapes out and glue them on the outside of the card.I used the bunny-shape cut out and also cut out in mirror-image, so I could make it look as though they were running from left to right and back.
Get a nice font and print a Greeting or Easter message on paper and glue this inside and add another bunny or silhouette at the bottom of the text.
Add a ribbon in matching or contrasting colour and tie this so that it goes around the back and the front of the card.You can hopefully see what I mean from the picture here where you look on the top of the card.

This is the inside of the card.
Here is a detail of the outside of the card at the top.
Yep, I did paint that egg- a long, long time ago, by the way.
And there is you card- practically free- don't you just love it when you can say that !!

I will do some more examples soon for Valentine's cards , also using old calendars, but I hope I have given you a bit of an idea.

Well, happy crafting with your old calendars!! 

5 comments:

Mariette VandenMunckhof-Vedder said...

Dearest Bea,

What an incredible idea for creating such lovely cards from calendars and such! Eco friendly.
Heb je mijn internationale weggeefprijs gezien? Loopt tot 25 januari en is voor een prachtig 925/000 zilveren alphabet engel!
Vandaag was Papa jarig; 90 geworden. Het is al over in Nederland... Deed er een blog over, het is best moeilijk om vèr weg te zijn. Het wordt zo onzeker of je de ouders nog in leven te zien krijgt... Maar goed, positief blijven!

Liefs,

Mariette's Back to Basics

Madelief said...

Hoi Bea,

Wat een ontzettend leuk idee! Schrijven jullie in Engeland nog paaskaarten aan elkaar? Hier in Holland wordt dat nog nauwelijks gedaan. Wel jammer hoor, dat zo'n traditie verdwijnt.

Fijne dag!

Lieve groet, Madelief

Sarah @ Modern Country Style said...

Hey missus,

I hope you had a lovely new year. I love your ideas for reusing cards. I did look through our Christmas cards to see if I could reuse parts of them for anything pretty. I thought of you. :-)

Sarahx

Vanessa said...

Hey lady! What a great idea! I just bought a new calendar and didn't want to throw away the old one because it was too pretty. Now I know what I can do with it! :-) Thanks so much for linking this up to Inspiration Friday!
Vanessa

Courtney ~ French Country Cottage said...

Hi there~ What an inspired and wonderful idea! I always hate to throw away old calendars too- I have one all of France set aside in a drawer to keep the photos- they are soo beautiful! Thanks for the great idea and thank you for sharing at Feathered Nest Friday! :)