Ideas for Homemade Easter Greeting Cards

Easter is just around the corner again, so it's a good time to start planning for Easter gifts and cards.

With a bit of preparation, you could easily make all your Easter cards this year instead of having to buy them from the shops.

Basic materials you'll need would include stiff, plain paper, cellophane tape or glue, and a sharp scissors.

Other materials you'll need will include decorative items to stick onto your card. Your box of scrap papers is a good place to start. Look for old easter cards, magazine cutouts, brochures or prints with either religious images on them (such as a cross, pictures of stained glass, churches or the likeness of Jesus). You could add cloth, beads, little crosses from old chains, or any extra decorative item that fits in with your design.

Prepare the materials by cutting out the paper to make the card, to size. You could either use a conventional four-faced open book style, a 1 page card, or have your card in the shape of an Easter icon.

For cute and light-hearted cards cut out in the shape of a bunny or an egg, you could decorate them with cotton wool dipped in yellow paint, or by tacking a piece of yellow cloth onto the cut-out shape. Further decorations could take the form of glitter, beads, crayon markings.

For more serious, adult cards, you could use dried flowers, pictures of religious imagery, pendant crosses, or other item that you desire to create a beautiful front page for your card.

For the inside of the card, an interesting idea to try might be writing your message on another piece of paper (of the same or a different, but matching, colour) cutting that piece of paper out to fit the card, and then using a lighter to burn bits off the edges of the paper, to create a beautiful light-brown edging. (Be careful and make sure you blow out the burning bits before the entire paper catches fire!). Then, stick the brown-edged paper, back onto the card.

You can further personalise your card by adding in a bible verse, or some words you've written yourself, which best capture what Easter symbolises to you.