Holiday Crafts for the Whole Family

Too busy to spend a lot of time on Christmas crafts with your family? Well, you're in luck, because the Internet is a great source of free images that can be used to make easy Christmas craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage holiday cards or free vintage Christmas clip art 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 important for people who want to honor copyrights (as we all should).

Doing a fast online search for “vintage Christmas” will net you a large number of free images from which many fun crafts projects can be made. And, of course, if you don't like vintage, new Christmas clip art can also produce great craft projects.

Here are some examples of simple Christmas projects virtually anyone can make by using free electronic images:

Christmas Gift Tags
You can actually find 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 insert them into a table in your word processing or other type of program. Make the table two columns by six or eight rows, depending on how tall you want the 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 them out using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. If you'd like to attach the cards to gifts with strings, use a hole punch in the corners of the cards.

Handmade Christmas Cards
Once you've gone online and downloaded the holiday image you would like to use, paste it into a Word, PowerPoint or OneNote document. You can size the card by adjusting 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" Christmas Wreath
Crafting Christmas wreath is easy and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you'll need:

• 1 plain Styrofoam wreath ring (you choose the size)
• Green construction paper, cut in the shape of holly leaves approximately four inches long
• Free Christmas clipart or vintage cards of your choice (between 2 and 4 inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
• Scissors
• Short straight pins

Ask everyone to write Christmas messages and the date on the holly-shaped paper 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 to watch the little ones around the pins!) When the leaves are all in position on the wreath, pin clip art among the leaves. The resulting wreath will be a treasure that commemorates your family's love every holiday season for a long time to come.

I hope you enjoy making these simple and fun holiday crafts and that you have a terrific holiday!