Handmade Christmas Card Ideas

November 24, 2012 at 5:00 am (Photography, Show 'N' Tell)
Tags: Cardmaking, Christmas, Christmas card, frugal, Greeting card, handmade, Photograph

While going through my assortment of cards I’ve made in the past I found some that would be appropriate to this season that I thought I’d share with you. It’s been quite a while since I’ve made cards, but a few years ago I was really on a kick and made so many. It’s nice to be able to still pick out a card for a loved one that is handmade even if I don’t always have the time to make one for each occasion as it comes along these days.

My mother-in-law goes all out decorating for the holidays. She has multiple themed Christmas trees in her home and many other seasonal displays. I always feel like we get to spend Christmas in a home out of Better Homes and Gardens while we are there visiting each December. One year it occurred to me to take photos of some of her decorations to make a set of Christmas cards to give her the following year. This is just one of many photos I used… seems all of the other ones are gone now. I also made a set of gift tags using the photos of her decorations printed much smaller and mounted on appropriate sized card stock with a hole punched and a string attached. They also went over very well. Even if your home isn’t a showcase you may be able to find photos to take that would work for cards or to make tags with. Or if you know someone as I do with a real knack for decorating the gift card/tag sets featuring photos of their own displays make a gift that is very personal. Whether or not you send out any of the cards yourself I suppose would depend on how comfortable that person would be with another using images from inside their home that way. A lot would depend upon the photo and how much of the home’s interior it showed.

Nature photos can also work well. It’s been a long time since I’ve been somewhere it snowed to take “Seasonal” sorts of photos, but even in the Arizona desert I took this photo which I think works well, as long as you call them “doves” and not “pigeons”. 😉

Photo cards are really so easy and quick to put together and you can make many copies of the same card at once. You just need a piece of card stock folded to match the size of the envelope you plan to use. You can buy packs of envelopes only at Michael’s, as well as same sized blank cards. I find it cheaper to buy a pack of card stock and cut and fold it to make my own blank cards, and I end up with a greater selection of colors that way. Cut a contrasting piece of card stock or scrap booking paper to frame the photo, glue it all down and you’re done.

These two cards were made by mounting a piece of paper on the blank card and then adding the silhouette of a male or female moose cut from a scrap of leather. (I actually made a lot of leather cards of different designs using the leather from an old broken recliner. You can see them here.) Let your imagination run wild with the shapes and symbols you might use. Leather scraps can be found in a wide variety of colors and one piece can make an amazing number of cards as each one uses so little of your material.

So for those of us without an extensive stamp and related paraphernalia collection, making handmade cards can still be done without much expense. It is a lot of fun both to make them and to give or send them. In the end it can save a lot of money as you use the cards you have made rather than dropping $2.00 to $5.00 a card every time you need one for a special occasion.(Not that boxed Christmas cards are generally that expensive.) The recipient is also more apt to appreciate them as the message you write inside is more personal and the fact that you are giving something handmade is always special.

Related articles

• Handmade Christmas Cards (knitstitchsew.wordpress.com)

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Fall Into The Holidays

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Monday:

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Joyful Stamper, Making Lemonade Blog, Thirty Handmade Days,

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