Oh, summer, the season of lazy pool days, sandy beach feet, museum-going, ice-cream eating, popsicle-dripping, hammock-swinging, baseball playing, firefly sighting, and road tripping. Whether you’re taking a local hike or heading out of town, print up a batch of these DIY printable postcards for kids and tuck them in a bag along with a simple travel art kit and a sketchbook for art journaling.
Here’s what you’ll need to make your own batch of homemade correspondence:
Printable Postcard Supplies
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- Printable postcards. Scroll down for the free download.
- Card Stock paper
- White glue or glue stick – this glue stick is fantastic for connecting papers that you don’t want to separate.
- Scissors
- Mark-making tools such as pencil, paint, or paint markers (we used Painters Paint Pens)
Steps for Printable Postcards for Kids
- Print postcards on heavy paper (like watercolor paper) or card stock.
- Cut out a postcard
- If using card stock, cut out another piece of card stock to match the postcard size.
- Glue the postcard to the blank card stock using a heavy duty glue stick. Two pages are necessary, otherwise your card will be flimsy and less postcard-like.
- Decorate the blank back with a picture of your travels or uplifting message.
- Write your greeting, add an address, stamp, and mail!
This step is super important if using card stock and you want your postcards to feel sturdy enough to mail: Glue a piece of card stock to the back of your postcard with a heavy duty glue stick like Elmer’s Xtreme.
Bring your postcard on your trip, along with art supplies.
We made this a family collaboration– my daughter drew the message and I added color with color-rich Painters paint pens. Read on to see how we finished it off.
We’ve been playing with calligraphy pens lately and picked up the Manuscript Leonardt set (pictured below) for a recent trip. As an aside, I wouldn’t normally recommend an open container of calligraphy ink on a flight (be careful!!), but we had smooth skies and luckily no ink was lost. I added some black ink flourishes.
Once we landed, my littlest added splashes of color with colored pencils, and then our postcard was ready to get shipped off. We’re also using the Progresso Woodless Colored Pencils (such rich colors – amazing! ) and the Koi Watercolor Travel Set (24 colors) (also a travel favorite!).
After a visit to the beach on a windy day, sailboats were in order.
What do you think? Would you like to print up a stack of postcards to bring on your next adventure?
Get the free download here ⤵
Download the Postcard Template
Safe and Happy Travels!
I love these postcards!! We have had a great time corresponding with friends and pen pals this summer. It really helps my 5th graders practice their writing and they love when they get mail in return.
Hi Connie, I’m happy to hear that these are useful, and love learning that you can use them with your 5th graders. Aren’t pen pals the best? I had overseas pen pals when I was young and forged a wonderful friendship with a girl in Sweden. We ended up visiting each other in high school and have remained friends to this day.
This is such a great idea! I am going to try this with my kids soon… We have family overseas and we owe some other homeschoolers in our city some penpal mail too!
This is wonderful to hear, Victoire, and I’m thrilled that you can put these to good use.
Thanks so much! We’re going to do this in my Wednesday evening Kids’ Club at church! It’s a great way to communicate with missionaries. And I know out-of-town grandparents are going to love this, too!
Brilliant, Kay! Communicating with missionaries and grandparents are two more meaningful ways to use these. Sending you good thoughts for Wednesday’s session.
Hi Rachelle, happy vacation and succes with moving and saying goodbye to the house. A saying farewell ritual would help transition. In Suriname we have a tradition when movibg to ‘call your spirits’ out of the house to come along to tbe new one. So my mom would always walk through all rooms and call our spirits by our names to come along.This way they don’t stay and cause you homesickness. We just happened to make our own postcards too! I recently bought the Koi travel kit and cut up postcard sized pieces of sturdy watercolor paper that fit neatly in the lid of the Koi watercolor kit. The paper is study enough to act as postcard paper. We drew the postcard back the lines) wit Sakura Micron pens. So the back is diy too. Sent one to the grandmas.
first to thanks Rachelle, for sharing this amazing post with us and make us part of it……………….
Really Rachelle, it’s a very good post about Printable Postcards for Kids………………………..and it’s a great experience to read your this post.
Some of the points mentioned in this post are interesting and I enjoyed lots to read it.
So, thanks again…………………..Rachelle
Looking forward to making and sending these to friends and family while we are all staying home. Who knew a virus would bring back the excitement of snail mail! THANK YOU
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