Christmas Card Ideas and a DIY Christmas Card Holder

Christmas Card Scrapbook Ideas
DIY Christmas Card Holder for each kid.

I love to design our Christmas Cards each year. I pretend everyone saves them all year long too. (Don’t burst my bubble, please!)

I’m curious, what do you do with your Christmas cards each year? Recently I saw a post where she hole punched the corner and put them on an “O” ring each year. Then she set them out in a basket for people to enjoy each year. Love that idea for all those pictures we get each year.

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I wish I would have thought of this 20 years ago. Right now I have a small scrapbook with those sticky-cling-annoying pages. (I bet you know which ones I’m talking about.) It’s what scrappers used before scrapbooking was a thing.

I decided to stop updating it once the kids graduated. I start the year with our family Christmas card on a single page and cram the rest in on a few pages, trimming and cropping as needed. I’m curious to know what you do. Feel free to comment below.

Cricut and Romeo Siser

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Let’s talk about Christmas Card Ideas

I’ve been a freelance graphic designer since 1997, so I find it hard to use another person’s design from Snapfish or Shutterfly. Yes, it would probably save me hours! … [HEY! Remember when we used to do actual letters?? I hardly get any letters anymore but love to read them. Thanks to Facebook for getting me out of that task.]

My kids are in high school as I write this, so I find getting them to pose for pics is emotionally exhausting for this mom. I do love the candid-real-life shots, so I tend to use them (or I use Photoshop to help). If the idea is funny and they get to feel like they are playing, it sure helps the photo part for mom.

Here are some Christmas Card Ideas we did with texting as they both got phones that year.

Abominable Snow cat Christmas card idea
Abominable Snowcat Christmas card idea

Or we all liked this year’s card with our cat we staged as the abominable snowcat. First I took a picture of our cat coming at us on our living room floor. Then we all went outside, and I took pictures of the kids on skateboards running at me and doing all sorts of silly things to get them excited about the Christmas Card idea mom makes them pose for each year. They took some pics of me running at the camera to complete the idea. Now, this is where my Photoshop skills come into play. I took all of these images and cut them out with Photoshop, removing the backgrounds, and adding them to a fun background. Now our abominable snowcat is running at us.

Photoshop helped this year too. I used the kid’s picture and made it look like they were in the snowglobe. This photo I took of the kids in my office and I’m pretty sure that my daughter did not even have pants on! She was always too hot as a kid. That memory cracks me up too. But the card only took me a few minutes to put together.

Snowglobe Christmas Card Idea
Snowglobe Christmas Card Idea

Although I think my favorite is the time I tied up the kids with Christmas lights. They were so into this Christmas card idea, and the giggles proved it was so much fun. They were younger, and that was back in the day when doing what mom asked without any eye rolls was an everyday occurrence. It was also when we had an Elf on the Shelf and decided to add him to the fun. Here’s the Christmas Card from that year.

Christmas Card Idea
Silent Night Christmas Card Idea

 

What to do with all these great Christmas Card ideas each year?

So, now that we have all these great Christmas Card Ideas every year I had to do something with them. I didn’t want to do a large scrapbook and have to maintain one for each kid. I was lucky enough to come upon these on clearance at Hobby Lobby after Christmas years ago.

They are 8 1/2 X 11″ books with a Christmas theme and matching paper. Perfect! So I snagged two books — one for each kid. Grab enough matching paper to complete one to 2 layouts per kid for their 18 years at home.

Each book came with 10 sleeves, Enough room so I could create 20 pages, or one for each year while they are home.

Christmas Card Ideas
Christmas Card Scrapbook Idea

Christmas Card Scrapbook Idea

Here’s what I came up with for the kids to have their own memory book as DIY Christmas Card Holder: each year I do one picture of each kid at the tree and their presents. Then I’ll also throw in the Christmas Card picture that we sent out and use the album matching paper I got to complete the one-page layout.

The kids were in elementary school when I started this, so I had to kind of wing the first few layouts of the book. But now they know every year after Christmas to pile their presents and pose in front of the tree for mom.

I know someday they’ll appreciate it, but for now, MOM enjoys putting them together. I also really do love going back and looking at them when I get them out with Christmas stuff each year.

Since both books are the same design for each kid, and they were the same pattern on each side, I ended up cutting vinyl with their name, so I could tell which one was whose.

Christmas Card Ideas
Christmas Card Scrapbook ideas

If you’re worried about finding time to keep this up – Don’t!! It was quite simple. And I think one year I was two years behind and cracked out a few pages all at once. The layouts are simple because the pages are smaller so it truly only takes a few minutes for each page.

For a couple of years, I was feeling creative and cut out extra things to go on the page like a paper snow globe to match the snow globe picture or when the kids got a gumball machine, so I cut that out from the Cricut Design Space.

The hardest part was keeping track of the photos as the kids grew too fast! ☺️

Christmas Card Scrapbook Gallery

There are some of the pages from our DIY Christmas Card Holder.

I hope that the gallery of pictures from our scrapbook pages & our Christmas card ideas will inspire you to find a creative way to keep your family memories.

We spend so much time on decorating, holiday prep, and Christmas time traditions be sure to find ways to save those memories for your kids to enjoy long after you’re gone.

I’d love to see the Christmas Card ideas you’ve made! Don’t forget to Pin this for later so you can find it!

Merry Christmas,

We Can Make That!

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4 Comments

  1. I upcycle cards that people give me. Some cards are previously used and others are the Freebies you get in the mail for contributions. Each one is personalized for the sender. Some using photographs like you did.
    Keep warm and Happy Crafting!

    1. A smart way to craft. I recycle some of mine too. I like to use my tag punch and make tags for next year out of them!

  2. I love all of these but the one with the cat really big is my favorite!! It is a great idea that I may need to use 🙂 Thanks for the ideas!!

  3. awesome idea! Love looking at all those cards I have in my Christmas card collection. I keep an album of everyone else’s pictures. I love looking our friends and family’s cards and how all the kids have grown!