Free Ideas for Making Your Own Christmas Card Templates

Getting Started

If this is the first year you’ve created handmade Christmas cards, consider the following tips to help make the job more manageable:

• Use time-saving products. While cutting your own cards and making envelopes by hand is a great way to use up leftover scraps from previous paper crafting projects, this approach isn’t practical for making Christmas cards. When you need to create a large stack of cards in a hurry, it’s best to simply purchase pre-made cards and envelopes in the desired size. This will allow you to spend more time focusing on the design of the project.
• Avoid working with unfamiliar techniques. If you’re not an experienced stamper, for example, choosing a card that requires heat embossing and masking will be a frustrating experience. Choose a design that reflects your level of crafting skill.
• Time yourself when creating your card. Ideally, you want to come up with a design that you can complete in approximately 15 minutes. While elaborate cards are fine for birthdays and anniversaries, a card that must be produced in large quantities should be fairly simple.
• Create an assembly line. Find an area of your home where you can work undisturbed and spread out all of the parts of your card. Put embellishments, patterned paper, and card inserts such as family photos or holiday newsletters in separate stacks so you can complete each step of the card making process in an orderly fashion.
• Ask for help. If you have older children at home, have them help with cutting, gluing, or stuffing envelopes. Card making is a fun activity the whole family can enjoy!

Lettering Ideas

While calligraphy can be breathtaking, free ideas for making your own Christmas card templates usually stick to simple lettering techniques. In many cases, this means using computer fonts. The Holiday Spot has a large assortment of Christmas-themed fonts that can be used to design holiday greeting cards. The selection includes snow covered letters, candy cane letters, and letters nestled within small Christmas ornaments. While these fonts can be somewhat hard to read in large blocks of text, they’re a great choice for highlighting short words or phrases within Christmas card verses.

Embellishment Ideas

When selecting embellishments for your Christmas card, look for graphic symbols that instantly evoke holiday memories. For example:

• A star or snowflake rubber stamp makes a simple embellishment for a general winter greeting.
• If you have access to a die cut machine, it’s easy to cut several Christmas trees that can be decorated with tiny brads, buttons, stickers, or small dots of glitter glue.
• To use up small scraps of paper from previous projects, make your own present embellishments. Cut squares of paper, then attach small ribbon bows to the top with glue dots.
• If you like to use your computer for crafting, try printing Christmas clip art onto heavy cardstock. Punch out the design with a circle scrapbook punch and attach it to your card.

More Free Ideas for Making Your Own Christmas Card Templates

If you’re looking for sample Christmas card projects you can adapt to suit your own needs, check out the following helpful links:

• Stamped Snowman
• Ho-Ho-Ho
• Stockings
• Peace
• Joy, Peace, and Love
• Noel
• Joy to the World
• Silver Tree
• Scribbled Tree
• Christmas Village
• Torn Trees

Additional LoveToKnow Resources

For more tips on preparing for the Christmas holiday, visit LoveToKnow Christmas..