Sincere Thank You

The graduation ceremony is over, the gifts have been received, and the dust has settled. While I was looking for my son's announcements, I was looking for Thank You cards at all the shops and was really let down with the lack of diversity. If you like zebras, cheetahs, or pink sparkles, you were in luck. My son did not fall into any of those categories and as always, I was left to my own resources.

I had already picked up some letter stamps on clearance and a brown pigment stamp pad a few months ago with the intentions of starting my paper crafts at a leisurely pace. Leisurely turned into abandoned and my only paper craft I have are the two sets of letters and two pads. I am a strong believer that the necessity is the mother of invention and being broke is the father of ingenuity. Add a pack of card stock and we're in business!
What do you know? I had some from his announcements. Awesomeness.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Trying to get your graduate within a month of graduation to sit down for thank you notes is like nailing down Jell-O. We picked a day that he and I were the only two home and went to work.

I selected all the letters needed to spell out "thank you" and laid them in order.
The card stock we used is 4x8 and we folded it in half.
I took the "t" and stamped it on each card and passed it to my son. He stamped below that the "y" and we traded off until we had spelled out "thank you".
Once we finished with the lettering, it looked bare, plain, impersonal. I suggested he stamp his fingerprint on the corner and he added the faces, each different than the other.

I had so much fun making these with my kid, as I have with all the crafts I have made with them. It made it even more worth it when I got the call today from my mom telling me how much she loved her card. She got it that it was really the most personal thank you card she ever got, and that is why we do what we do. When we crafters make things ourselves, it is for many reasons: frugality, quality control, invention, or ingenuity. Most of us make things ourselves to make it personal, so the recipient knows we love and care about them enough to do it ourselves.