I
had such fun making our 2013 Christmas cards! In Australia, most people
just send out a store bought pack of greeting cards and write a small
message inside but I have always loved the American Tradition of sending
yearly cards with pictures of the family on them. There's something so
sweet about hanging up pictures of your smiling loved ones and friends
faces as part of your holiday decor. As you know we have many amazing
American friends and I love to receive the picture cards from their
families each year. So much so, that I have never even thrown out a
single one of these cards and instead store them in our Christmas
decoration box. It is so fun each year as we begin to decorate, to pull
out the old cards and oh and ah over our friends families and see how
much their kids have all grown and what has changed! So for the last two
years I have added photos to our cards as well.
For this years card I pulled the best of both worlds together with a traditional greeting card AND a family photo. I used
this gorgeous (and free!) gingerbread muffin recipe card download from the blog
Cook Republic,
so I can't take any credit for the gorgeous artwork on the card. But I
did add some of my own decoration to it by way of brown kraft cardstock,
candy cane twine, a faux instax of us and a small wooden Christmas
decoration. I found the Christmas decorations from our local grocery
store for only $4 a packet and love that it was an efficient way of
sending a little gift to each family along with their card. And the
instax frames that I slipped our photo in were from Kmart.
Another
of my favourite details of this years card was the button and string
closure on the back of each envelope, which we also did on our wedding
invites. It looks tricky to put together but it actually so easy and a
cute way of adding a little something to a plain envelope. Basically all
you need is a circle hole punch (mine was 2cmD), a small hole punch, an
eyelet tool, eyelets, string and coloured cardboard. First cut two
circles with the circle hole punch out of your coloured cardstock and
then with the smaller hole punch punch a hole in the centre for your
eyelets to go through (I find it easier to mark the center with a dot
before I punch the holes out). Next place the coloured circles onto the
back of the envelope where you want them to sit and mark the center of
the circles with a pen. Then punch small holes through your envelope. To
put it together I place the small piece of string through the top hole,
letting the majority hang towards the bottom right of the hole. Place
the red cut circle on top of that and then place the eyelet through the
center of all layers and press. Repeat these steps (minus the string) on
the bottom circle and tada you have the cutest little button string
closure to finish off any envelope! Hopefully that all makes sense as I
was going to do a tutorial, but I couldn't quite manage to hold the
envelope, eyelet tool and camera all at once ;)
Another
of my favourite details of this years card was the button and string
closure on the back of each envelope, which we also did on our wedding
invites. It looks tricky to put together but it actually so easy and a
cute way of adding a little something to a plain envelope. Basically all
you need is a circle hole punch (mine was 2cmD), a small hole punch, an
eyelet tool, eyelets, string and coloured cardboard. First cut two
circles with the circle hole punch out of your coloured cardstock and
then with the smaller hole punch punch a hole in the centre for your
eyelets to go through (I find it easier to mark the center with a dot
before I punch the holes out). Next place the coloured circles onto the
back of the envelope where you want them to sit and mark the center of
the circles with a pen. Then punch small holes through your envelope. To
put it together I place the small piece of string through the top hole,
letting the majority hang towards the bottom right of the hole. Place
the red cut circle on top of that and then place the eyelet through the
center of all layers and press. Repeat these steps (minus the string) on
the bottom circle and tada you have the cutest little button string
closure to finish off any envelope! Hopefully that all makes sense as I
was going to do a tutorial, but I couldn't quite manage to hold the
envelope, eyelet tool and camera all at once ;)
