I’m just gonna start this post off by admitting that I’m not a card person. Maybe it’s my cheap side, but I don’t really remember getting a lot of them growing up either. We never bought greeting cards just to give with gifts. The gift was the gift. I still won’t spend money buying a card unless it’s absolutely necessary. I mean really, the only time we got or gave cards was to hold money, and that’s pretty much still the rule, with one exception. Every year we spent hours, weeks some times even making Mom and Dad designer cards from scratch. And ever year our parents fuzzed, and fauned over our labors of love. Those are memories I’ll never forget. The hubs may not be quite as sentimental as I am, but he still gets a kick out of the handmade cards I now help our kids make for special ocassions, like birthdays and especially for Father’s Day. It’s not about the money, or even the gift. It’s about appreciating these little people who think the sun rises and sets with you. It’s an important job, a life’s work, and they get so excited coming up with ideas and seeing them come together. Especially when they’re bouncing on their toes waiting for us to see what they’ve made.
If you happen to know our kids in real life, you know they’re the complete embodiment of the stereotypical ‘boy’ and there’s never a dull moment. The hubs started calling them, ‘The Flyin’ P(our last name)’ young, and it’s true– some days they can roll through like their own traveling circus show. We’ve always called em little monkeys, you wouldn’t believe the things we’ve witnessed them scale, climb, hang on, you name it. Especially the youngest son. When we grew out of calling him fatty mc’fat fetus, and then eventually phased out of honey nugget, he became our little monkey. And I mean like as soon as he could move, so when I saw this idea from Crafty Morning, I knew this was our card this year. Well, last year, but that’s immaterial.
And for something so stinkin’ cute, it doesn’t get any easier.
Grab your card stock and fold or cut it to size. Use brown washable paint and then we used thumbs and pointers to make the monkeys bodies. Let the finger prints dry, and then use brown marker to draw on arms, tails, ears, and legs.
Use a black, or darker brown marker to draw the larger mouth area and eyes. Use hot glue, or regular glue, and use a piece of string, hemp, twine, whatever you’ve got on hang to form a ‘rope’.
When the glue is dry, write the outside greeting and then let the kids enjoy decorating the inside with their special messages and sloppy little signatures 😉
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