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

Disney/Pixar Cars Cricut Cartridge Review

My brother and sister-in-law just sent my son a few little school things for Joey's first day of kindergarten.  So I had Joey help me design and make a thank you card using my Cricut machine.  I found the Cricut Cars Cartridge a few months ago in the clearance section at WalMart, which was very exciting.  My son is absolutely a Cars fanatic ~ he has a Cars bedroom, probably has collected every single die cast car from the movie, and has had a Cars themed birthday for his last 4 birthdays.  Needless to say, this Cars cartridge has come in very handy.

One of the best things about this particular cartridge is that it includes just about all the characters, other than specific piston cup racers, from the movie and for most characters there are at least two different versions you can create.  In addition to the characters, there are a lot of accessories including street signs, road pieces, and different popular sayings and symbols from the movie.  For example, if we look at the character "The King," you can create 3 different versions of him, his name, the Piston Cup and the Dinoco sign.  Each character comes with several accessories, which I love!  Now the only negative I find with this cartridge is that the characters are extremely detailed, which means cutting out a lot of very small pieces and finding where they fit in.  This means in order for me to be able to create them, without making myself crazy, I have to make them large, since my smaller Cricut machine does not cut as precisely as a Cricut Expression would (I am hoping to upgrade to one soon!).  So with that in mind, the card I created is very large to accommodate the large vehicle my son chose to decorate his thank you card.

In order to create this card, I also used the "Mickey Font" Cricut cartridge.  I created a license plate with the word "Thanks" on it.  Surprisingly, the Cars cartridge did not come with the license plate option. It seems it would fit in perfectly.

Thank You Cards from My Daughter

With my daughter's fourth birthday coming up, today's project was to create some blank thank you cards for Hayley to send out after her birthday party.

To make the cards, we used my Cricut machine, the Alphalicious cartridge and the Everyday Paper Dolls cartridge.

One of the best purchases I have ever made is my Cricut machine. I just love it. When I first purchased it, my goal was simply to have the best looking scrapbooks out there. Well, it has been used for so much more than that. I've used it to create a Countdown to Disney chart to help my kids track the days until our last trip to Walt Disney World. As a long term sub in a fourth grade classroom last fall, I used it to create all my bulletin boards, as well as projects for the students. I created DVD case covers for numerous video montages I have created for my family. I could keep going, but this machine has been invaluable and used for much more than just scrapbooking.

My collection of Cricut cartridges is limited, but the Everyday Paper Dolls cartridge is by far my favorite. Of course, as the name implies, you can make paper dolls, but that is not all it can be used for. Each "doll" is themed and the cartridge gives you an outfit for the theme and then accessories to match the theme. For example, the "Party" doll had the option of cutting a party dress, hair bow, teapot and teacups, ice cream cones, balloons, burger and fries. There is also a selection of animals, pets, borders and vehicles. I've used the accessories more than the dolls to decorate scrapbooking pages, cards and little things around the house. I am so happy with the versatility of this cartridge.

My daughter and I used the Cricut machine and the Cricut cartridge "Everyday Paper Dolls" to create her thank you cards. We created several dolls and Hayley chose the colors, clothes and accessories for each of the cards. It is a great project for her and I to do together. She is a very creative three year old, so being able to select designs and colors is just what she loves to do! The hardest part of the project was telling her we had made enough paper dolls. I think she could have made hundreds of them! After creating all the dolls, we then selected colors for the cards. My card making skills are pretty basic at this point, since I am new at it, but Hayley loved them, so to me, that means they were perfect! :-)

The picture posted shows four of the eight cards we made today ~ enjoy!

Want more information on the cartridges I used? Check out these links:
Everyday Paper Dolls
Alphalicious