Pinprick Greeting Cards

I'm the type of person who must give the recipient the perfect greeting card. By perfect I mean I'll spend 45 minutes reading every card and trying to pick out the one with the right kind of humor, the right sentiments, the right conveying of emotion.  For me the card is the most exhausting part of the present-giving process.

Last week I was home packing up some birthday gifts to ship around the world and realized I didn't have cards for them. Feeling a bit tired, I balked at the idea of heading to Target to search for the most fantastic cards I could find...so, instead I decided to make my own.

I wanted something more elegant than simply writing "Happy Birthday" in sharpie marker so I decided to try the pinprick technique. What resulted was a card that surpassed my envision and became something I was proud to ship off.

I had some shimmery cardstock in the closet (I can't even remember buying this!) so I traced a card I had and cut out the cardstock.

Then, I went into my word document program and typed my greeting...and then spent some time finding the perfect font.  After printing it and cutting it out, I taped it backwards into the inside of the card.

Now comes the fun part.  Get a piece of cardboard, lay your card down, and start pricking holes with a pin.

Once you're done, take the stencil off and admire your piece of art.

I experimented with using skinny and bold fonts. With the bolder fonts, I tried filling in the whole word with pricks (looked a little messy and I placed my pricks too close together) and outlining (works best with larger size fonts).

Have fun with this and get creative!  Use bolder fonts and outline the letters, pinprick a bunch of curly cues, or outline two birds on a branch.