Christmas Crafting: Christmas Cards

As the holidays approach, I am working on a plan to keep them manageable. Last year's Christmas was pretty reserved. We decorated the house right after Thanksgiving (as I like to take things one holiday at a time), I made a few new projects and sent out cards, and that was it. No major projects. I made this wreath and that was kind of it. I had vowed to not spend a ton of money on crafts, and have the same plan for this year. I figure that if I add just a few things each year, that will keep it manageable.

One thing that I am not making this year is our cards. Thanks to some pretty awesome engagement photos from Lisa Mathewson, our amazing wedding photographer, we decided to go with the printed cards versus the homemade ones. Who knew we were somewhat photogenic? I like this one...although it's not the one we used for the photos.

Honestly, I'm excited because, not only do I love our pictures, I am also glad to have one less project. That leaves more room for cookies and other things.

Vistaprint sends lots of coupons and seems to always have an offer on Living Social or Groupon, so we went with this design:

I love it so much! Even the back is cute. Can you guess which one of the engagement photos that we used?

I realized though, I never shared last year's cards, which looked like this:



I found a picture for these string art cards online last year, and thought it was worth giving it a shot. Although they look like a more simple design, they proved to be harder than I thought to actually make. In terms of supplies, I just used blank cards thread (lots of it), a hole punch, two stamps and some red ink. 

I set up an assembly line on the kitchen table. I started by stamping the inside of the cards and the envelopes. They never dry as quickly as I expect, so I spread them out and tried to keep track of the order that I stamped them. 

Then I began the punching with my tiny whole puncher. I did a double punch on the top to make sure that there would be enough room for the overlapping string. Then I punched six holes across the bottom, as evenly spaced as I could without measuring it all out. 

Then I stuck a glue dot directly under the top hole on the inside and began stringing. I started by sticking the string into the glue dot, working from the far sides in, with the string crossing over the front and down, then back up on the inside. The string then ended in the middle, stuck on top of the glue dot.

Each thread portion got me through a few cards. Unfortunately, there were times when I would be almost at the end of the card and realize that the amount of string left wouldn't finish at the top. This is where it wasn't quite as easy as expected. I also would imagine that some folks may have gotten a card with a string that had come undone. Creative but temperamental.

If you don't have a Christmas card plan, consider giving it a shot.

In the meantime, it's back to my planning and prioritizing. I'm thinking just two-three crafts for this year. Stay tuned.