Email or Text Handwritten Thank Yous and Notes from your iPad

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I text and email handwritten thank yous and other notes.

I know that handwritten snail mail notes are still the gold standard for thank you letters.  However, I am convinced that our standards have to be shifting a little with all of the new and more commonly used ways of communicating.  I already use a fun service called Felt to send handwritten snail mail cards with photos and other elements  — you can see my video on that if you are interested.  But I think it is becoming more acceptable to send gratitude, sympathy and other regards through quicker modes of communicating. It seems somewhat insane to pop a card in the mail to have it arrive 4 days later when you can send an email that will be received in seconds. 

My problem is that I find the typewritten e-cards that are available a little too impersonal.   Some people love animated cards like the ones available from Jacquie Lawson, but what if you just want to send a simple personalized handwritten greeting?  Shouldn’t you be able to combine the speed of electronic communication with the personalization of a handwritten card?  I recently had an occasion where people brought gifts.  Well, I didn’t want to wait forever to thank people for coming to the event and for their gifts, so here’s what I did and I like this as an option going forward.  I used a combination of Canva and a handwriting app like Notability or Procreate.  I’ll walk you through the process. 

Front of “Card”

The first thing I do is log into Canva.com.   I use this online service for all of my YouTube video thumbnail images, but it is a fantastic and free design service for everything from posters to flyers to social media posts.  So, I log on and search for “greeting card” or “thank you” or whatever.  Canva has a ton of templates.  And remember, everything is modifiable, so if you like the background on one, but the text on another, you can make those changes.   I just wanted something simple, so I chose this design.  There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to use Canva, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I wanted this to be the “front” of my card, so I’m getting rid of everything except the Thank You.  Okay — once I get it the way I want it, I take a screen shot and crop it down so that it is just the card.  Now, I want to create the

Inside of the Card

To do that, I want to keep the background of the card, but get rid of the text.  Once I’ve done this, I take another screen shot and crop it.  Now, I want to handwrite on the inside of the card.  To do this, I have 2 apps that will do a serviceable job of this.  The first is

• Notability - which is my go to app for handwritten notes and diagrams.  So, I open a new note and add this photo.  Now I can choose a color and handwrite on this card just as I would on a physical card.  Once I’m finished, I take another screenshot and crop it.   I could also use the app
• Procreate - this is a more intensive art app, so I would only use this if I already knew my way around the app.  That said, I prefer it to Notability for a couple of reasons:
• Color pick - I love the ability to tap on a color in the document as a color picker.  That way I can easily use the colors that are already in the card as my ink colors.  You can see I’ve used the 3 colors in the dots for the text in this card.  I also like the ability to choose a
• Brush - Notability only has one style of pen — although you can change the thickness.  But Procreate has a TON of brushes including some that make nice calligraphy effects. And finally, Procreate has
• Layers - it is an art program after all, so layers are part of the deal.  The reason I like them for this purpose is when I’m doing a bunch of thank you cards, I don’t have to create multiple documents for each note the way I would have to Notability.  Instead, I simply turn off the layer for the last note and create a new layer for the next note.  They are all saved as layers, but the only visible layers are the ones that I choose to turn on.

Once I’ve got both the front and inside of the cards, I can send these 2 images through text, email, or whatever app you are using that allows images.  I find that this combines the speed of electronic communication with the personalization and beauty of handwritten notes. In my case, this allows me to be even more creative than I would be with paper, so if thoughtfulness is part of the deal — I find myself being more thoughtful using this method.  For my older relatives who still go out and get the mail everyday and appreciate the traditional snail mail cards, I’ll continue to send them, but for most folks, this is definitely the way to go!  Let me know what you think.  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!