I made two of these–one for mom and one for adopted mom–for mother’s day and I only drew a tiny bit of blood. If you’re looking for a homemade card (and you can’t draw or paint or sew or decoupage), this is the craft for you. All you need is patience. And elf fingers.

Pick a word (the shorter, the better–meaning, don’t get ahead of yourself here) and trace it on the inside front flap of the card. Make sure to do this BACKWARDS, because you’re working from the inside out. Or just pick a palindrome (emordnilap!) and save yourself the trouble–like kayak or radar. Epic is the card that with “radar” on the front in tiny bumps. Epic.

Then find a safety pin (safety first!) and start poking though your card. It’s easier to poke through the paper into a soft surface like a piece of foam board or a perfectly awesome round cork trivet that you remembered you had under a recipe book in your kitchen. See if you have one of those.

My finger started to get sore after the fourth hole, so I wrapped the pin in a piece of elastic I had lying around my well-equipped craft room to soften the blow. Worked great. Just keep poking until you fill in your sketch. Hundreds of tiny little bumps on a card = something thoughtful you can FEEL.

Last step! Admire and run your sore fingers over the bumps about a million jillion times. Then send to your mom, or person of interest, and remind them to check the mail (what mother doesn’t check the mail the day before mother’s day?! GRR!) Also, cool trick: Tell your recipient to hold the front flap of their card up to a lampshade to see something quite pretty. K. Your turn. Happy mother’s day.