‘Tis the Season: Family Christmas Craft Projects
Don’t have a lot of time to spend with your kids making Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the online world is a great source of free images that can be used to create quick and easy Christmas craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage holiday cards or free vintage Christmas clipart found online make projects simple, due to the fact that vintage images are versatile and also quite effective when it comes to delivering a holiday message. These pictures also usually cost nothing to download and their age puts them outside the range of copyright protection. That’s a terrific bonus, because you don’t have to worry about using other people’s art illegally.
Just a simple online search using the search term “vintage holiday” will give you a large selection of free vintage images from which many fun crafts projects can be made. And if you’re not a fan of vintage, contemporary Christmas clip art can also be used to produce beautiful projects.
Here are examples of three projects nearly anyone can make by using free art found online:
Holiday Gift Tags
There are actually free holiday gift tags available for download from the Internet but you can also make your own. Simply download the the image or images you like and paste them into a table in your word processing program. The table should have two columns and six or eight rows, depending on how long and thin you want the gift cards to be. Place your chosen art into every cell (or every other cell if you want to fold them), leaving room to write people’s names. Then, print onto heavy card stock, cut the place cards using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. You can also make holes for string or ribbon in the corners by using a hole punch.
Handmade Holiday Cards
When you’ve downloaded the holiday image you’d like to use, paste it into a word processing or PowerPoint document. You can make the card virtually whatever size you want using the software’s settings. Place the image on one half of the card, so it can be folded in half after it’s printed. Print the card on card stock as heavy as your printer will allow, fold it and and apply just a little glitter glue to make it sparkle. You might also want to make your own envelopes or just buy two-for-a-dollar card and envelope sets at the dollar store and then throw away the cards.
“Gather ‘Round the Family” Holiday Wreath
Crafting a Christmas wreath is easy and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you’ll need to have on-hand:
- 1 plain Styrofoam wreath ring (you choose the size)
- Green construction paper, cut in the shape of holly leaves approximately four inches long
- vintage Christmas clipart or vintage cards of your choice (between two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
- Scissors
- Short straight pins
Have family members and guests write Christmas messages and the date on the holly leaves. Then, stick them to the Styrofoam wreath with the straight pins. You might need to adjust the leaves to look good. The straight pins will make it easy to reposition the elements. (Just make sure small children don’t get their hands on the straight pins!) When the leaves are all in position on the wreath, add the clip art. The result will be a custom wreath that reflects your family’s love for a long time to come.
I hope you have a great time making these holiday craft projects and that you have a joyful Christmas!