Custom Kid-Drawn Stationery

My daughter Jamie corresponds with a few of her friends through the mail. You know, paper, stamps, patience.She asked me to make her some custom stationery and when she couldn’t quite articulate what she wanted me to design, she grabbed some paper and a pencil and drew her own design over and over until she had something she liked. She’s such a crack-up, completely her own person with quirky ideas. I love that. And although she’s almost 13, she wanted her stationery to look little-kid-ish.
She’s at school now, so I traced her art and lettering with a fine-point Sharpie pen onto velum and scanned it. I work in a newer version of Adobe Illustrator that allows you to trace a JPG image into vector art. Once traced, I added color (based on her direction) to the pineapple sections. I ran it through Photoshop to give it that letterpressed/off-register look which can also be similarly achieved by just moving the color blocks out of their correct placement a bit.
I placed the art and type 3-up on a letter-sized file and printed onto basic cardstock. I cut out the cards and this is what will be waiting for her when she comes home from school today, along with some No. 10 business envelopes. There’s other ways to turn your kid’s art into stationery even without the computer or software. Have little ones draw several designs with a black pen and choose their favorite. Copy 3-up on cardstock and allow them to color in the final stationery themselves. This would also make fun grandparent gifts!