Trying Something New - Preorder Options

For the last four years, I've created custom thank you cards for a couple of 4-Hers. The first year, I was eager to make them, but really had no farm or animal-themed supplies.

I created some very basic cute cards with a few background stamps and I used a heart to create a clover. They turned out really cute, but I knew I'd need to add some farm animals to my stamp collection for the next year.

In year two, I had cute animals to stamp and hand-color. There was a small challenge of needing a turkey, which ended with me coloring a chicken stamp to try and pass it off as a turkey. I think it worked pretty well. I also created cute pig and sheep cards.

The animals were hand-colored with Copic markers and I created layers with die cuts on some fun plaid paper. I was upping my game.

In the third year, I snagged a few more stamp sets and received two orders. I had three orders in the third year.

I did the same hand coloring with Copic markers this go-round, but I fussy cut the animals before adding them to the pattern paper.

For the first set of cards, I stacked a few of the hand-colored critters and added them to some fun checked paper that had a bit of a country flair to it. The card was completed with a thank you die cut.

On the second set of cards, I did more of my favorite hand coloring. Then layered the fussy cut animals onto a banner die and hand-stamped the words thank you below the pair.

The banner with the cute little animals in place was then added to some cute country swiss dot pattern paper and mounted onto a white card base.

Are you starting to see a bit of a theme with my custom 4-H cards?

The third set of cards was a more clean and simple design, with only stamping and hand-coloring.

I created a bit of a simple scene with these critters and hand-stamped a bold thank you onto the card panels. Each animal was hand-colored with Copic markers to complete the card.

Every year I'm challenged to create a new set of animal-themed thank you cards. I always rise to the challenge to create the perfect set.

After sharing all of these past creations, I'll get to the point of this article - this year's preorder plan. I'm currently creating samples and a flyer for the 4-H leader to share with kids to see if we can increase the number of orders and encourage them to get their cards early. The plan is to create a flyer with photos of options, then they can pre-order in advance and have their cards before they leave for the fair. I'll share the samples in a later post.