Quick and simple crafty Christmas cards

I come from a family who pretty much always makes their Christmas cards. Now and then we’d have to cheat (yes, that’s what it feels like) and buy some, because we were too late or someone was in hospital or something like that, but generally we would make them. When I was little, I would usually make them and my sister would make them when she was little. Once we had desktop computers and printers, there was a tendency to make one design and print it out. Some years have been more intricate and adventurous than others. One year I made triple-layered cards with cut-out windows in them and then individually coloured in pictures at the centre. That was, needless to say, before I had children.

Once you have children, though, making home-made cards takes on a whole new dimension. I had intended to get Rosemary to do a drawing of a Christmas tree or similar, scan it in, funk it up a bit in Photoshop and/or Illustrator and then print multiple copies. However, time was running out, toner was running out and I also thought it would be nice to do something that could involve Eleanor as well as Rosemary. My first idea was potato stamps. I cut out some Christmas tree and star shapes from some potatoes and Rosemary tried to print them onto cards. All we got was big blobs of paint. Not a success at all.

But the next idea worked out really well.

Cut and stick Christmas cards

You will need

• Different coloured (preferably bright) A4 card
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Glitter shakers (optional)

I prepared the cards and shapes the night before, but if you have older children, you can get them to do that too. I made four cards out of each piece of A4 card – cut into four then folded in half. (I made a total of 28 – but obviously you can make however many you need.) And then I used a couple of pieces of each colour (with extra green) and cut out squares and triangles of different shapes. I made extra green triangles because they’re very useful for Christmas trees. (I did this while catching up on TV shows on Sky Go and drinking a glass of beer. Of course, you could watch or drink different things.)

I then presented the girls with blank cards, glue, shapes and glitter shakers and they made a bunch of cards, and had lots of fun doing it (which is important when you’re using your children to do your work, really). We made Christmas trees, stars and also some random patterns. And then sprinkled some of them with glitter. Eleanor did a few just with glitter, too.

Here are Rosemary’s cards (she got a little distracted and ended up creating pictures instead of cards in the end):

Here are Eleanor’s (she had a real production line going):

And these are mine (I had a great time, too):

You probably haven’t left it this late, but just in case, I believe it’s the last posting date for second class tomorrow, so you could prepare the materials tonight and get the kids on the job in the morning, if necessary!

We have quite a lot of left-over shapes, so maybe we’ll use them for Thank You cards, too. If we actually manage to be organised enough to write any, which is certainly not guaranteed!