Santa Claws Is Coming, To Cards...

Even before the recent budget constraints I’ve always made my own cards. For as many years as I can remember I’ve saved every Christmas, Birthday, Graduation, New Year and Whatever-else cards in a huge box. Over the years added an array of craft supplies to it: scrap booking paper; googly eyes; pom poms; glitter; gel pens; stickers. Many, many stickers. Images from food boxes or magazines or old falling to pieces kid’s books that I like the look of. Gift tags. Any bit of un-ripped and cool looking wrapping paper. Feathers. Ribbon. It’s a real treasure trove.

Each and every gift I give gets a homemade card to go with it. I love re-discovering the cards and the messages I’ve been lucky enough to receive over the years, and cutting, sticking and sketching them into something else to pass on the love. I don’t mind saving $7 a card either…

For the last couple of years, I’ve been getting my oldest (now almost 3) to help me with the Christmas cards. Last year, at just turning two, his art skills were pretty limited to scribbling and sticking (and even then, he had a thing for putting the stickers all on top of one another in large piles or upside down) so the final offering was anything but neat and professional. Still, they went down a treat and he had a great time doing them, so this year, he got another run.

In the last few months, he’s been all about drawing people. Round faces with big eyes and a mixture of details… eyebrows, eyelashes, feet, hair, cheeks. Whatever he thinks of in the 20 seconds before he wants fresh paper to create ‘next people’. With that in mind, I decided to get him to draw Sharpie ‘Santas’ for me on a few packets of coloured cards.

Once we'd covered a whole stack of cards in the Santa people, we added paper Santa hats with stickers or pom poms to the top and then decorated by giving each Santa a (foam) friend. Because Christmas is all about friends, right?

That done, he went back through the stack, adding other Christmas stickers for a bit more colour and decoration. He even picked out a few to stick some googly eyes to.

The whole batch took about 45 minutes to create and he loved the fact that I thought his drawings were ‘good enough’ to send to all our friends and family. And I loved that this year he’s stopped putting all the stickers on top of one another in a large pile - a bit of a relief for my OCD!

Are you guys making your own cards this year? What kind of things do you do?

#Family #Christmas #Craft