Thank you cards are expensive

With baby showers and wedding showers comes the very daunting task of the thank you card. It's been a while since I purchased a package of them myself, having not needed a large amount in recent years. I've made due with just making my cards by hand in onesies and twosies. I just wasn't feeling it when it came to making my own thank you cards for the baby showers though, until I went shopping for some this week. $3.99 for an eight pack of thank you cards seems to be the going rate. Do you know how many thank you cards I'm going to need? I have two showers coming up and probably a string of random baby gifts that will find their way to us during our hospital stay and after she arrives. Basically, I'm going to need a lot. I decided that 100 would be enough to get by with, because I can always keep the extras for other things down the road. But 100 cards at $3.99/8 pack...that's somewhere in the neighborhood of $50.

Enter: compromise.

I went to Office Depot and purchased two boxes of the generic business-type thank you cards. One box contains 50 cards for $9.99. Then I raided my stamp collection and picked out a cute little baby carriage stamp. I stamped each card with the carriages in the bottom right-hand corner.Next I pulled out my Stampin' Write markers and started coloring. Stampin' Write markers are awesome. I have had my set for approximately 8 years or so and they are still just as wet and useful as the day I purchased them. They have two tips: one end for writing and the other is a brush-like end for coloring.I laid out 8-10 cards at a time and colored each batch differently so I wouldn't get bored, which gave me a nice variety.There. Thank you cards for my baby shower for $20 + tax. So far I've only stamped and colored 50 of the cards. After tomorrow's shower I'll see how many more I might need to do and go from there. Otherwise the rest of them are staying blank for now and will eventually be used for something.