How To: Thanksgiving Place Cards

Looking for a simple and easy way to dress up your Thanksgiving table this year? Place cards are a great way to add color to your table and make it easy for your guests to find their seats. In this demo, I've created place cards using card stock, stamps and embossing powder for our Thanksgiving table.

1. Decide the color scheme or theme of your place cards. This is usually a continuation of your event's already establised color scheme or theme. For our Thanksgiving, I'm using leaf stamps to create an autumn themed place card for our guests. 

2. Using a gold stamp pad, I stamped the leaf onto orange and red papper. I'm doing two different place cards for the table to mix it up.

3. Pour Embossing Powder onto the stamped leaf. Embossing Powder is very different from regular glitter and can be purchased at a local craft store such as AC Moore or Michael's.

4. Once you've shaken off the excess embossing powder, you will use a heat gun to melt the powder. A heat gun can also be purchased at a local craft store. Don't use a hair dryer because it doesn't get hot enough to melt the powder! (I've clearly tried this before and it was not good)

5. You will know that the powder has melted because the gold powder will turn metallic gold. I've found that gold and silver work best but there are tons of different embossing powders available.

6. When all of the leaves or images have been embossed and melted, you can cut them to put them on the place cards. I chose to do two-toned place cards but you could emboss directly onto the place cards themselves for an easier project.

7. Use a tape runner (fancy name for double-sided tape dispenser) to attach the embossed shape onto the place cards.

8. Last step is to write your guests names on the cards. Be sure to have correct spelling and test out your pen on a separate piece of paper first. Also, make a couple blank place cards for last minute guests or mis-spelled names!

Since you're an embossing expert now, use the same stamps and powder to emboss other items for your Thanksgiving holiday. Below I've used the leaf image on the Menu card also to keep with the Autumn theme...

I hope you and your family have a very Happy Thanksgiving! Stay tuned for ideas for Holiday Parties...