Handlettered Gift Idea: A Pokeball Card

I hate buying greeting cards.  They just don’t do my sentiments justice – often they are too sappy, trying way too hard, too crass… so I usually make my own, handlettered cards.  One of my friends recently got a new job and will be leaving our department – so I wanted to send him off in a big way.  I was struck my DIY greeting card genius – a Pokemon themed card.

My vision: A giant Pokeball card that housed sentiments from the group.

After some thinking and tinkering, here’s how it turned out:

It’s a giant card that opens up to reveal these handlettered words – each representing our friend.  On the back, we wrote stories or notes about how he embodies these things to us.  You can of course put whatever you want inside – like printouts of actual Pokemon, leave the space blank for signatures directly on the card, or more!

Estimated project time is about 1.5 hours depending how fast you letter and cut. Because this is a more photo-intensive post, with more steps, I’m going to keep things as brief as possible – so I am going to sound more blunt, not because I’m not excited, but because I actually want you do be able to DO this project! Here we go!

HANDLETTERED POKEMON GREETING CARD TUTORIAL

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which simply means if you happen to purchase anything, I’ll make a small commission that goes back to shipping giveaways and reviewing your favorite products – thanks for your support!

SUPPLIES:

• For the inside notes, I got white cardstock and Tombow dual brush pens (green, my friend’s favorite color)
• Posterpaper – red, black, and white
• A pencil
• Magnets (I found these at the kids section of Michael’s, but wish I used these stronger scrapbooking magnets)
• Stapler, scissors, glue
• Whatever string you want to hang it with

Group Notes. This is the most customizable part of the tutorial.  In this version, I wanted to find some words we would use to describe our friend – and from crowdsourcing, these are the words we came up with.

1. Brainstorm words
2. Cut 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of cardstock in half (size isn’t important). Optional: Round the corners
3. Letter in whatever way you choose.  I shaded my letters (Tutorial here!)
4. Have friends write their notes and stories on the back that exemplify why those words illustrate that person to them

The Pokeball. This is the core of the project!

1. Cut out red and white semi-circles (top left image). I don’t have a giant circular object to use as a template, so I just a cheater’s compass by tying a pencil to a string.  I lined up the center point in the middle of the bottom edge, and drew the line as I held down the focal point to create a semi-circle. Not perfect, but worked!
2. On both pieces, cut out an additional rectangle section in the middle (top right image). This will secure the semi-circles to the rest of the card. Stack the 2 semi-circles together to cut any excess off and match their shapes (my cheater compass is not always consistent!).
3. Once you have both semi-circles, gently washi tape them to the black posterboard, and line it up into a ball (lower left image).
4. Carefully cut the black posterboard to line up with the red and white pieces. (lower right image)

1. Flip the Pokeball over (black side up) and cut finish cutting the black circle shape. Fold in the 2 rectangles (left image).  I adhered them first with glue.
2. (optional) The red half of the ball is the top, so before I glue it down, I laid the string into the fold (middle image). The card will hang by this string.
3. Finally, very carefully flip the ball over and gently open up the white and red away from the black so you can add additional support by stapling the rectangle sections to the black body itself (right image).  Optional: color in the staple with a Black Sharpie

1. Cut a strip of the remaining black poster paper to edge the center of the ball (left image).  Glue it to one of the halves (I glued mine to the white part).  Close the Pokeball to make sure the black strip shows up evenly across. Cut to perfection.
2. Use some circle template and cut out the center button from the white (upper right). Cut out a larger circle from the black.
3. Glue the white button on top of the black circle.  Glue the top half of the button onto the red half (lower right image)

Magnets! So this is a little tricky, but you’ll want to add magnets to wherever the the center of the button and words will be.

1. I first glued one magnet to the button.  Then I tried to line up the 2nd magnet underneath it and glued that down. (left image)
2. Arrange your cardstock to get a sense of where your words will lay, and take care to keep all the cardstock inside the ball (right image).  Glue down your magnets in their respective places.

Step back and admire your effort – because it looks awesome.

Think you’ll give this a shot?! Let me know down below!

Jessica