Episode: 1521
Title: HPR1521: Cardboard Greeting Cards
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1521/hpr1521.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 04:35:32

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Greetings listeners of Hector Public Radio.
My name is Shane Shannon and I'm a computer instructor living in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
But today I'm not going to talk about computers.
Instead, I'm going to talk about my new hobby, making greeting cards out of discarded cardboard
boxes.
Now, why would I make a greeting card out of discarded cardboard?
Well, for one thing, it does have been a lot cheaper than going to the convenience store
or the local drugstore and buying a greeting card.
Here in Canada, if I want to buy a greeting card made by one of the better companies,
it's going to cost me at least $5.
So it's a lot cheaper just to make them myself.
Also, making a greeting card out of cardboard is quite creative.
It gives me a creative outlet.
I spend my work day helping people learn how to use computers.
When I come in home and making a greeting card for a friend, making a birthday card,
making a anniversary card, it gives me a creative outlet.
Activates a different part of my brain.
The third reason why I would suggest that you make greeting cards out of cardboard is
because it's such a unique and personal gift.
Every cardboard card that I make is unique because I use different parts of the box and
every card looks different because of the cardboard that's used.
Even if I use the same design over and over again, the cards end up looking different
from each other.
And people can tell that you've taken time to make a unique gift for them, and that's
quite personal for them.
Now what supplies would you need to get into this new hobby?
Need a good box cutter, a good utility knife.
Also I would start collecting cardboard boxes.
To start with your first card, you'll need at least half of a cardboard box.
It's great if you can get the boxes that are the size that you use for moving your possessions
from one house to another, but I've discovered another kind of box that's great as well.
At my workplace, we get shipped a lot of text books from Amazon, and the Amazon Shipping
Boxes, many of them are a perfect size.
I walk home from work and I can easily stick an Amazon Shipping Box used to ship two or
three books to us.
In my backpack, I just carry it home with me.
It's a much easier size and much easier to work with.
In addition to having a box cutter and some cardboard, you'd want some copy paper or
light colored construction paper.
What do you want is something that I'll contrast with the normal, bland color of the cardboard
box, and we'll use this for writing the message in the card or on the card.
So you're going to need a marker or a pen as well, or colored pencils or whatever you
want to use, a stapler or glue, or both.
The card I just made has stapled bits and glued bits to it.
And you might want wrapping paper or some kind of textured paper, just to add some different
elements to the card.
I've got a three-step process for working on one of these greeting cards, made out of
cardboard, and here's the first step.
You take a look at the cardboard box that you're going to use, I'm going to assume that
you're disassembled it and that it's flat, and you're going to look for the different
folds that are in the cardboard box.
Now cardboard boxes have two kinds of folds.
The folds that is between two sides of a box is different, works differently than the
fold between the side of the box and the flap.
Most of the cardboard box that I've seen has a less resistant fold between the two sides
of a box.
Now the fold between the side of the box and the top or bottom flap of the box, that's
going to have less give to it, it's going to be more resistant.
What we're looking for is a fold that folds very easily, so that when you fold the two
pieces together, it's almost closed, it doesn't give any resistance.
Now if you're running low on cardboard and you have to use a piece of cardboard that
involves the top or bottom flap of the box, you can still use it, you'll just have to
work with it, maybe use a ruler to press against the fold, just make it a bit looser, make
it less resistant.
Or even if you have a piece of cardboard that doesn't have any fold, you can use a ruler
to make a fold, you can just press the long side of a ruler against the cardboard and fold
it up against the ruler.
So the first thing that I would do is identify where the fold is or make a fold in the piece
of cardboard that you're working with.
Then you want to cut a piece of cardboard, that's about the size of a greeting card and
you want to have that fold as part of it.
So what I've written down here in the show notes is this instruction.
Cut a piece of cardboard that is a size of a greeting card when folded in half along
the existing fold.
So when you're done this, you've got a piece of cardboard that's folded in half along
that existing fold, it folds close quite easily.
And there you go, that's going to be the base of your card.
Now if you notice that you have old packing tape attached to the piece that you've cut
out or if there's some strange cutouts or some additional strange folds, it doesn't
matter.
Any weirdness that you have as part of this cardboard piece, it just adds to the uniqueness
of the greeting card.
Okay, now we're at the third step and the most creative step.
You've got your piece of folded cardboard and you can use this as a base on which to
staple or glue other pieces.
You can add wrapping paper and paste wrapping paper to this base that you're created.
You can use construction paper.
Anything you need to make a design on or in the greeting card.
So I want to tell you about three cards that I've made within this last year and explain
how I use this base.
So I had a friend who had a birthday a few months ago.
So I took the cardboard piece that we're using as the base for the card and I found some
black construction paper and on the front of the card I made the silhouette of a city.
So I used black construction paper to show the buildings and then I cut out pieces in
that black construction paper and pasted some yellow construction paper behind it.
So it looked like there were city lights on in these city buildings.
And all that I stapled or pasted onto the cardboard piece that I cut out earlier.
I also made an anniversary card for my parents that they're 30th anniversary recently and
I used the method I talked about earlier to cut out the piece of cardboard that folds
nicely into the size and shape of a greeting card.
And then on the part that would have been the front of the card I cut out section so
that it looked like the number 38 was on the card.
So the front of the card is a big 3-8 joined together and when you open that up then
you can see the inside of the card.
A third card I made recently had a round cut out in the front of the card and through
that round a hole you can see a yellow sunshine made out of construction paper.
So there's all kinds of methods you can use to make a card that looks unique.
I have a link for you.
If you want to look at those three cards that I mentioned and the show notes you can
go to a bitley site.
If you go to bit.ly, 4chlash cardboard cards, bit.ly, 4chlash cardboard cards you'll
see the information I just mentioned.
Okay, that's it.
I hope that this is good information for you and that this will help you make cheap
cards that are creative and uniquely personal and I hope you have fun with this.
Okay, that's all for now.
Good bye.
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