If you knew me back in 2007, you may have gotten one of these little numbers in the mail to announce my graduation from Cal Poly. I got them made at Papyrus with my monogram on the front (yeah, that's right, those are supposed to be initials) and printed my own text on the inside. The intent was to save money on those absurdly expensive announcements the school sells, which I did. But, I was never very happy with the outcome. In fact, my brother-in-law mentioned that the front looks a little bit like something written in Arabic or Hebrew, and now that's all I see. So, I've had about 15 of these suckers sitting around my apartment for 5 and half years. Because I still engage in the (admittedly archaic) tradition of hand written thank you notes, I always try to keep a selection of note cards on hand, so I kept telling myself that I would use them.... but, I didn't. In fact, I continued to buy new thank you notes instead of using them.
Recently, however, I am on this quit-buying-things-you-don't-need-and-are-just-going-to have-to-pack-in-a-couple-of-months kick, and yesterday I realized that I am just about out of thank you notes. Damn it. I'm going to have to use them, aren't I? So, I did. I wrote a note in one. But, I couldn't bring myself to mail it. Too ugly, too weird, too self-serving.
In the past, I have made my own notecards from the blanks they sell at Michael's, and the internet
is full of DIY notecard ideas. Surely, I could transform the ugly cards! The question was, could I do it without buying anything new? So, decided to try my hand at the pretty paint-chip crafts that are all the rage on Pinterest right now. I stopped in at the Home Depot and tried not to look too conspicuous as I select 5 paint chips from the wall.
The original plan of just cutting an oval to put in the center didn't work out quite like I'd planned. The ovals all looked a little wonky. I almost went and bought one of those fancy oval cutting widgets, but realized that would defeat the purpose. So, I switched to rectangles.
Scissors, paint chips, a scrapbooking adhesive runner, a Sharpie, and an hour or so and I've got upgraded notecards without buying anything new. They're not perfect, but at least they don't look like they're written in Sanskrit.
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