Simple Family Christmas Craft Projects

Don’t have a lot of time to spend with your kids making Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the Internet is full of free images that can be used to create quick and easy Christmas craft projects. For example, crafts made from vintage Christmas greeting cards or vintage holiday clip art 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 Internet search for “vintage Christmas” will net you a large number of no-cost images from which many fun crafts projects can be made. And, of course, if you don’t like vintage, contemporary Christmas clip art can also produce great craft projects.

Here are examples of three projects nearly anyone can make by using free art found online:

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 paste them into a table in your word processing program. The table should have two columns and six or eight rows, depending on how long and thin you want the gift 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. You can also make holes for string or ribbon in the corners by using a hole punch.

Handmade Holiday Cards
When you’ve downloaded the Christmas 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. 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.

Family Love Christmas Wreath
Making a Christmas wreath is simple and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you’ll need to have on-hand:

• 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 two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
• Scissors
• Short straight pins

Have family members and guests jot Christmas messages and the date on the holly leaves. Then, stick them to the Styrofoam wreath with the straight pins. Be prepared to adjust the positioning of the leaves a bit to get them to look balanced. The pins will make it easy to reposition everything. (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 result will be a custom wreath that reflects your family’s love every holiday season for a long time to come.

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