Creative Christmas Cards
by By Eleanor Lohse
My daughter and I enjoy making our own Christmas Here are some of our ideas that you might want to try. (1) If the blank card is white (and most of them are), we like to use a dampened sea sponge dipped in acrylic paint to randomly sponge all over the card. You can use the standard Christmas colors - red and green, gold, silver and blue - or any colors that you feel will enhance the card you are making. One tip is to use a small amount of paint and a very light touch when sponging, otherwise your card will bend. (2) If you don't want to sponge, you can cut decorative paper to the size of your card (or a little smaller) and glue to the card front using a good-quality memory glue. On our cards, we've used solid color, striped, polka-dotted, and metallic papers. (3) Now it's time to decorate the card - one option is to use rub-on transfers, which come in a variety of patterns (we've used snowmen, candy canes, and gingerbread men on some of our cards). They're fast and easy to use and give a professional look to your cards. (4) Stickers are an invaluable asset to a crafter... there are so many choices out there! From glittery stickers to Victorian to 3-dimensional to exquisite religious designs, there's something for everyone. Using stickers, you can create a beautiful scene on your card that is truly one-of-a-kind. (5) Another creative option is wrapping paper, which you can get anywhere for a small amount of money (in our local dollar store, we got a few rolls for about a dollar each). For your card, you want to choose a wrapping paper with a variety of designs (our paper had snowmen, Santas, bears, angels and Victorian toys). Carefully cut out your design and apply it to the card. We used a great product called Sticky Dots Adhesive  . All you have to do is peel up the cover sheet, press your cut-out to the sticky adhesive, replace the cover sheet, rub gently, lift the cover sheet, carefully peel off your design and stick it to your card. It's that easy! (6) You can also recycle your old greeting cards by cutting out different designs from several I cards and arranging your own collage on your blank card. Once again, we used the Sticky Dots for this method. Not only are you saving money, but it's a great way to use old cards that would otherwise he stashed away in a drawer. (7) For the inside of a blank card, we have found that it's a great idea to recycle the messages from old cards. We used decorative scissors to cut out the greeting and applied it to the inside of our blank card using the Sticky Dots. It creates a nice old-fashioned look. If you want, you can outline or embellish the greeting with gel pens. and can be a great way to decorate a card. You only need a small amount of paint (too much will warp the card), and you just stencil in the regular manner. On a dark paper, stenciling your design using just white paint creates a dramatically different look. (9) Once you have your basic design, you might want to perk it up even more. Now is the time for embellishments! You can glue on old lace, holiday ribbons or sequins. You can 1 create the look of snow by using a stencil brush dipped in a tiny amount of white paint and pouncing with a very soft touch. You can also add holiday-colored glitter in sma11 amounts to the front of your card. Use your imagination! (10) Once your card is completed, there's one thing missing -- a symbol or design that you create for the back of your card to show that you made it! We used tiny rub-on transfers for the back of our cards and carefully wrote our initials around the design using a red gel pen. This is a nice way to show how proud you are of your finished card! But the most important thing of all is to have fun and be creative! |
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