Minnie Mouse Thank You Cards

My youngest daughter recently celebrated her fourth birthday (hard to believe she is 4!!).  One of the things I instill in my children is letting people know you appreciate them coming to help celebrate their birthdays and to show thanks if they should happen to also bring a gift.  I am not a big fan of the store bought thank you cards, but that is simply because I can rarely find ones that reflect my children's personalities or the ones that have room for my kids to "write" in them.

For every thank you card they write, the first line is always a thank you statement, followed by something they liked about the gifts they were given or something that they did with that person while they were at the party. It is a great way to get my kids to express themselves and also to see just how they viewed each of their gifts, meaning which part of a gift was most impressive.  For example, my daughter was given a doll with all sorts of accessories.  When we were writing that thank you (to her sister - Emily insisted on writing that one not me!), she said, "thank you for my new doll.  I really loved the princess spoon to feed her."  Of all the things that came in the pack with this doll, she was really impressed that her new baby had her own princess looking spoon. Who knew?

Ever since my children could hold a crayon, they "signed" their own cards.  This year, all three of my children could sign their actual names.  Sniffle, sniffle - another milestone I am excited about but also that means they are growing up!!  Just a few years ago, most of their signatures were swirls, slashes or any other type of marking they could fit into the space of the card.  So with all that, this year Emily and I created Minnie Mouse thank you cards to coordinate with her Minnie Mouse party.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of all the different versions of the card.  For each thank you card, she personally chose which color bow the Minnie should have.  The one you see here is for my mom and dad.  Emily decided to give my parents a green bow because Grammie loves Christmas and green is a Christmas color.  Other versions of the card included bows with yellow checkered paper and some had blue with stars.

One of my favorite Cricut cartridges
& the one I used for this project

Materials to Create the Minnie Thank You Card

• Red Card ~ 4-1/4" by 5-1/2"
• White Cardstock ~ 4" by 5-1/4"
• Black Cardstock
• Skin Tone Cardstock
• White Cardstock 
• Pink Cardstock
• Various Patterned Paper for Bows
• Cricut Mickey Font Cartridge
• Cuttlebug Seeing Spots Embossing Folder

Steps to Create

1. Run the 4-1/4" by 5-1/2" white cardstock through the Cuttlebug using the Seeing Spots Embossing folder
2. Center the embossed cardstock onto the front of the red card and adhere
3. Using the Mickey Font Cricut Cartridge, cut the Minnie face shape using the black cardstock at 6" using the "minnie" key
4. Cut the face layer from the skin colored cardstock using the "charm" function key, then the "minnie" key