Don’t have a lot of time to spend with your kids making Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the World Wide Web is full of free images that can be used to create quick and easy holiday craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage Christmas cards or vintage Christmas clipart found online are simple to make, due to the fact that vintage images are both versatile and very effective at conveying a traditional holiday feel. 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 Web search for “vintage holiday” will give you a huge 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 produce great craft projects.
Here are some examples of simple holiday projects virtually anyone can make by using free electronic images:
Holiday Gift Tags
You can actually find free holiday gift tags available for download from the Internet but you can also make your own. Just download the image or images you want to use 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. Paste the art into every other cell if you want to fold them or in every cell if you don’t, making sure there’s enough 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 presents with strings, use a hole punch in the corners of the cards.
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 size the card by adjusting the software’s settings. Position the image on one half of the card, so it can be folded in half once 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 can also make your own envelopes or just get some at the dollar store.
Family Love Christmas Wreath
Crafting holiday wreath is simple 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 (your choice as far as 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 two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
- Scissors
- A box of short straight pins
Have family members and guests jot Christmas messages and the date on the holly leaves. Then, position them in a balanced way around the Styrofoam wreath and affix them with the straight pins. You might need to adjust the leaves to look good. The pins will make it easy to reposition everything. (Just make sure to watch the little ones around the pins!) When you like the way the leaves look, add the clip art. The resulting wreath will be a treasure that commemorates your family’s love for a long time to come.
I hope you have a great time making these Christmas craft projects and that you have a happy holiday!