Make your holiday cards extra special this year with a one-of-a-kind holiday postmark available only from the Santa Claus, Indiana post office. Visit the Imaginary Greetings company blog to learn more about how this special picture postmark has become a Christmas tradition since 1983.
Here is a great article showing different ways you can put garland on a tree. Visit the Home Decorations blog for more ideas on how to decorate your home for Christmas.
Each year, millions of Christmas cards pass through the postal system to their recipients. Throughout our lifetime, we each send out and receive tons of Christmas cards. Though we may keep a few as keepsakes, the rest are usually thrown out with the holiday trash.
Why waste such beautiful cards, though? There are many ways you can reuse a Christmas card. With a little creativity and craftiness, most anyone can save some of those festive designs from being yet more fodder for the garbage dump.
For example, you can cut out designs from the fronts of cards and use them on your holiday scrapbook pages. Clip vertical strips from a favorite card to use as a bookmark. Elaborately designed card fronts can be trimmed and used as Christmas tree decorations when you punch a hole in the top and add an ornament hanger.
Cut pieces of several cards and decoupage them onto a box to be used instead of wrapping paper for a special gift. Or decoupage cutouts from your cards onto a tray and then add lacquer to seal it to create a festive Christmas tray.
These ideas are but just a few ways to reuse your cards. Perhaps these ideas will inspire you to create even more Christmas card masterpieces!
Most of us refer to our Christmas cards as exactly that–not as Holiday Cards instead. And the same goes for our Christmas Trees. After all, who wants to take Christ out of the holiday that’s named for him? There’s a chain e-mail currently making the rounds that alleges the White House Christmas Tree will not be a Christmas Tree this year, but a Holiday Tree, and ChristmasMyths.info has the scoop on whether or not the rumors are true.
We’ve all been there–it’s December 15th, and you still haven’t sent out your Christmas cards yet. At this point, you’re wondering how you’re ever going to find time to send them out, whether or not they’ll arrive before Christmas, or if you should even bother. You don’t have to find yourself in that place this year, if you take a little time to plan out your Christmas cards now.
The first thing you’ll want to do is formulate your address list, so you’ll know how many cards you’ll be sending. Update any addresses that have changed, and delete and add as necessary.
Once you know how many cards you need, purchase the cards ahead of time, either from an online retailer or from a store. Photo cards can be purchased online and add a personal touch because they let all of your recipients see how your family has grown and changed over the last year. You can also buy traditional cards online, and some even come personalized with your name or a message of your choice inside. The best time to buy cards at a store is right after Christmas, so you can get them at 75% off and put them away for the next year.
When you get the cards, the next thing to do is go ahead and sign the cards and address the envelopes. Do this in stages so you don’t get stressed out. If you start early enough, you can do just a few cards a day and still get done in plenty of time. A shoebox makes a great container for organizing your Christmas cards, because you can stick the card and envelope in there together, and even file alphabetically with index cards if you wish. Leave the envelopes open, so you can add a Christmas letter, if you like.
If you want to include a Christmas letter, write it little bits at a time as you remember things. This is something you can do year-round if you like–just sit down once a month to add a sentence or two about what happened in your family that month. You can edit it and print it out when you’re ready to send your cards, and you’ll have a great letter without much effort.
When the letter’s done and it’s time to send, the only thing left is to insert the letters, seal the envelopes, stamp, and send! That’s not nearly as time-consuming as having to complete the whole process at one time, and it relieves a lot of stress.
This cute 3-D Christmas card looks a whole lot more complicated than it really is. All you’ll need to make it is 3 stamps, some paper, glitter gel pens, and dimensional paint. Watch the video for a demonstration:
Remember those greeting card making programs that seemed to come with every PC sold in the mid to late 90s? It was a lot of fun to make a card yourself that you could send to friends and family for any occasion, without having to run out to the greeting card store to buy anything. Now, you can do it all online at web sites like My Card Maker. For the cost of a monthly subscription to the site, you can create and print as many cards as you want. Whether or not it’s a cost savings is debatable, given the cost of printer ink, but there is definitely a significant time savings involved. If you’d like to put your personal touch on a card but don’t want to spend a lot of money and don’t consider yourself crafty, this could be a great alternative.
This adorable Christmas card project gives you the opportunity to let your kids in on the Christmas card-making fun. For this project, you’ll be making a snowman out of cardstock and attaching it to the front of the card with dimensional adhesive, so he or she stands out from the background. It’s a quick, simple, and easy homemade Christmas card project that you can do together as a family. Enjoy!
Want to make your own Christmas cards or gift tags but don’t have a lot of time? You can put this simple mini card together in about 2 minutes–less if you use the “assembly line method” to make more than one at a time. Watch this video to see how to make the card:
Sending Christmas cards to American soldiers deployed overseas or recovering from injuries in a military hospital seems like a great idea–spreading Christmas cheer to people who are more than likely missing their families at a time when everything seems to be all about family and togetherness. However, this mail doesn’t actually get delivered, according to our friends from the Christmas Myths blog. You can still send Christmas greetings to soldiers though, you just have to make sure to get a name and address.