the art of selecting the perfect holiday card

every year during the holidays I attempt to send out the cutest holiday cards. this year I used the following criteria to select the perfect card:

1) is the card cute enough? a button snowman or a red nose reindeer suit me fine, but I’m not about pulling all the stops out and going for a scene with Santa petting Mrs. clauses kittens.
2) chic factor I love the illustrated cards with the girls in sexy snow outfits lugging around shopping bags on their shiny vespas, and while they maybe perfect to send out to all my girlfriends I believe these cards might alienate my guy-friends as well as some of my conservative “Christmas preservationist” family members. these family members might find the card offensive and see it as further evidence that my approach to the holiday that celebrates the birth of Christ is becoming increasingly materialistic.
(i love this card from hello lucky)
3) modern design--red and green can be so dated so I try to find updated and usually simple designs and decorations for the holidays
4)deeply religious vs. secular -I always prefer the secular cards but sometimes even if you have santa’s jolly old face on the card you can piss off some holy rollers in your family and sometimes I just forget that some of my friends are jewish. (haha just kidding paula!)
5) comedic effect-not necessary but a bonus factor…maybe including a funny Christmas memory in the message

So, being relatively artistic I decided to take the time and effort to make my own holiday cards this year with the ultimate goal of creating a card that met my own specifications!

Initially, I set out to create two separate designs: one a button snowman and the other a gingerbread man card, but quickly changed my mind. Prior to changing my mind I had already cut 10 cards out of red card stock, spent a considerable amount of time and money selecting & buying supplies (most of which I would not use) and had used a rubber “Merry Christmas” stamp inked in green to dress up my store bought white envelopes. So already I had violated one of my criteria but I couldn’t very well throw out the ten envelopes I had stamped because that is wasteful! So I decided to work with it.

I should also mention that I really didn’t have the time to make a card for everyone on my Christmas card list, so I had to purchase one box of cards. I purchased a boxed set of 12 cards at target. They were white embellished with red felt mittens with green stitching. the design was simple, modern, secular, and cute, but it wasn’t a “Melanie original” and it was a “safe” design especially since it stayed with the traditional color scheme of red and green.

tasks necessary for completing the project:

1. I purchased silver ink for my rubber stamps (I own a snowflake stamp and a merry Christmas stamp)
2. I cut ornaments out of cardstock and decorated them with various ribbons and papers I had purchased or found in my craft box.

items/tools I used to complete the project:

• metallic silver cardstock (to cut out ornaments I used one sheet in making 10 cards)
• hot pink matte cardstock (ornaments I used <>
• various printed papers available at any scrapbook store, papersource.com, or art store
• silver ribbon
• red ribbon (assorted)
• pink ribbon (assorted)
• white ribbon (assorted)
• silver pen
• black pen
• silver ink pad
• rubber holiday stamps
• double stick tape
• scissors
• x-acto knife
• double stick tape
• craft glue (if it dries clear it works best!)

optional:

• eyelet setter
• white eyelets

my design(s):

on half of the card I simple attached the modern printed paper to the cards, glued ribbons to the card then I either glued the bows that I tied to the cards or I attached eyelets to the card to make it easier to tie the ribbons into bows and attach additional tie-ons. I recommend using the eyelets if you have a hard time tying bows that look presentable. (just remember practice makes perfect) I then stamped a silver snowflake on hot pink card stock, cut it out, punched a hole in the paper, weaved in silver string/ribbon and affixed to the card so it hung from the bow. Initially I wanted to affix snowflake cutouts that I was going to cut out from the silver cardstock, however, I didn’t have enough time to do that and I didn’t feel like trying to find pre-made cutouts or other snowflake embellishments which you can most certainly buy.

Final Result(s):

I stamped each envelope with my x-mas and snowflake stamps and mailed them early this week along with my target bought cards. Overall, it was a lot of fun and I have more ideas for next year!

Other Holiday Prep:

Well Gifted

So all of my gifts have been wrapped, now I just need to pack em up and ship em out…BUMMER!


But don’t they look pretty?

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