After making fill-in-the-blank style photo-thank-you cards for the past few birthday parties, I think I have it almost down to a science. The only part that nearly threw me was that when Mia was this age she was able to start helping to personalize the notes by signing her name. Logan, on the other hand, can't write his name and to be honest, I'm not even sure if he knows what letter it starts with! Luckily, I was inspired by my friend Liz who had her son color a homemade shark birthday card, and I realized that Logan could do the same thing for his thank-you cards. (By the way, Liz, I have your card sitting right in front of me, so it's coming soon!)
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| {Card views from the outside (top) and inside (bottom)} |
Materials:
- blue card stock (8 1/2" x 11")
- paper trimmer
- word processing software/printer
- pinking shears
- scrapbooking adheseive (or glue stick)
- markers/crayons/colored pencils
- pen
Directions:
- At the party, take a picture of each guest. We used the shark photo prop that I had made for this.
- Have photos printed. Note: My 4" x 6" prints were ordered from Snapfish.
- To get two cards per piece of card stock, fold a sheet in half, hamburger style. Then, use a paper trimmer to cut along the crease. Now you have two cards. Again, fold each one in half like a hamburger.
- Check to see that the photo fits inside the card, trimming as needed. Next, use scrapbooking adhesive (or a glue stick) to adhere the photo to the inner left part of the card.
- While the card is still open, use your pinking shears to cut a "bite" out of the top left corner of the card. Make sure that this won't cut out anybody's face, of course. If desired, use a pen to add the date below the photo.
- For the fill-in-the-blank thank-you templates, use word processing software like Microsoft Word. Mine is in portrait layout and I was able to fit four per page. I chose to keep this simple, but still fun by including some invented words (or, as I like to call them, "mommyisms.") The wording reads:
Dear
___________________________,
Thanks for
helping me celebrate my
“jawsome” 4th
birthday! Thanks also for
the
____________________________
________________________________
________________________________.
It’s “fintastically”
fun!
Your friend,
Logan
There was also a
photo of a shark that I found online and inserted to the left of Logan's name, but I can't get it to show up here. After printing these out, I trim them to size with my paper trimmer and then use pinking shears to make decorative shark "bites" along the top and bottom edges. Lastly, affix the fill-in-the-blank template to the inside of the card, to the right of the photo. Depending upon the age of the birthday boy (or girl) you can either fill this in or let him (or her) help.
7. For the front of the card, print out simple coloring page shark designs. I can't seem to find the image I used, but just do a search for something like "
shark images for coloring." I pasted my image into Microsoft Word and scaled it so that I could fit six per page, in landscape format. Then, I used word art to "Thank You!" below each shark. I trimmed and adhered these to the front of each card and then Logan colored the shark pictures.
I love the idea of taking the theme all the way through the party and wrapping it up with a thank-you card. Adding photos is a little something extras that makes for fun souvenirs. These cards were not difficult to make, (once I did the advanced planning and creation of the shark photo prop!) and they were perfectly personalized to the theme of Logan's "jawsome" 4th birthday party. For more themed party thank-you card ideas, see my previous posts about the
Care Bears party thank-yous and the
Cars-themed party thank-yous and the
Fancy Nancy party thank-yous.
