Thanksgiving Placecards

I never have time to do papercrafting, so I always try to find good excuses to sneak it in...this time it was to make these elegant little Thanksgiving placecards to be sold at a silent auction to benefit my daughter's preschool. With Thanksgiving coming up next week, I thought they would be both beautiful and useful- a great combination when it comes to a silent auction!

If you've never done papercrafting but you'd like to give it a try, placecards are a great place to start. For these I simply picked out some patterned paper I liked at Michaels, then teamed it up with two solid colors of cardstock and matching embellishments.

Use a solid color 12x12 piece of cardstock and cut it into 9 4x4 squares. Each of these will be folded in half (or "tented") for your placecard. Then simply cut the patterned paper slightly smaller (or not, as seen below- I just made it 2x4 to fit the front of the placecard) to serve as your mat, then cut the other solid cardstock smaller than that and adhere it on top.

Some helpful hints:

- Ink the edges!! It will give it a more finished look. Take an ink pad and simply run it around the edges of the paper. Using a brown ink pad and scuffing it along the edges will give it a nice aged look.

- Use a paper cutter for quick, straight lines. These run about $10 and are SO worth it!

- Corner rounders or paper edgers (like scissors that cut a pattern into the paper) can add interest and class to your project.

- Use the right adhesive- a glue stick will work fine for bonding paper to paper, but if you are adding any kind of fabric or metal embellishments, you might want to consider glue dots or special double-sided tape made specifically for those kinds of materials.

Have you crafted anything for Thanksgiving? Leave a comment and share!