Quick handmade cards?

The one time of year I enjoy making cards or other crafty projects is around the holidays. However, I usually run out of time to accomplish the Christmas ideas popping into my head.

I realized last week that I was running out of time to order any kind of Christmas cards, but truthfully I don't feel like spending money on photo cards or any other type of card this year.

I'm an artist who works with and creates A LOT of printed paper. There are plenty of supplies sitting in my studio for creating cards, but extra time isn't usually available. Could I put together 40 handmade cards quickly? That's what I decided to try.

To make it as efficient as possible I started with sheets of cardstock (U.S. letter size), instead of card blanks. Then I gathered piles of red and green gel-printed scraps in a range of tones and quickly cut rectangles ranging from 1 to 3 inches long and roughly 1/4 to 3/4 inch wide. I wasn't precise, just eyeballing the cuts and putting them in piles. 

I drew two lines on the cardstock, one in the middle of the bottom half and the other in the middle of the top half.  Then I started gluing my colorful scraps along the lines, slightly overlapping as I went. I wasn't planning any type of pattern. I would grab a random scrap from the red or green pile depending on what I thought I needed. I used a glue stick to keep it moving.

When I finished filling both lines on a sheet I would put it aside and start another one. I completed 8 sheets this way. 

Once the gluing was done, I cut the sheets in half lengthwise, and then each half was cut in half again to create 4 postcards ( about 4.25 x 5.5 inches each).

I timed myself on the first sheet - 12 minutes. This works out to ~3 minutes per card. Not too bad, right?

I debated adding some doodles with an acrylic marker or stitching some lines, but my goal was to get them out the door, and those additions seemed counter to that goal. 

In the end, I found an old date stamp and quickly added "Dec 25" with a black ink pad, which I quite liked. 

What do you think?

I did end up writing brief messages on the back side and getting photos of my kids printed to include with some cards, so maybe this isn't saving me that much time compared to Shutterfly photo cards, but it is handmade and didn't cost me anything to make. And, that feels like a win. 

As my scrap piles dwindled and became less interesting I ended up making a few simple wreaths and trees to get to my target of 40 cards. Here are samples of those as well...

Merry Christmas to all!