Cards and Envelopes

I’m finishing up week 1 of the evil, evil cold, and everyone in the house is feeling better except me.    Yay for being pregnant, right?

The good news is, I have been crafting things for Christmas.  The bad news is, nothing has been done for either the tree or finishing up Whimsykins, except for those I posted last week.  My main difficulty left with this cold has been a lingering sinus headache that is making my teeth hurt when I walk around, so I can’t really look at tiny tiny things such as anything involving small stitches.  So far, no other signs of a sinus infection so I’m hoping in another couple of days this too will go away.  I hope.

This weekend I primarily worked on my Christmas cards.  I posted my official “cool” card from Shutterfly a couple weeks ago, and as much as I would have loved to send out 50 copies of that card, that would have cost me a small fortune, even with working the Shutterfly coupon deals like I do.  (It’s an addiction – the first step is admitting you have a problem.)  However, I did score 75 free prints from their “refer a friend” deal, so I decided to get creative.

I didn’t want everyone to get the same card, so I made five different versions.  I basically took a 4×6 print of our family and imported my own graphic directly onto the picture.  Here’s a couple shots:

I made a banner on the right hand side that reads “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas – Love, The Shields Family – Andrew, Kristy and Michael” and varied the colors on each card, arranging the family photo as needed.  I then flattened the whole thing and uploaded them as just a normal 4×6 print.  The quality is pretty good, all things considered, and a lot cheaper/faster than me trying to do this on my inkjet printer.

Now I have five different 4×6 prints, but I want my cards at a more standard 5×7 card size.  So I dug through my scrapbook stash, found some suitable card stock pieces, and used my paper cutter to make 5×7 cards.  A little swipe of a glue stick and TA DA!  Christmas cards I don’t even have to sign!  Plus, you get a cute picture of us.

Next up – the envelopes!  I am going super-cheap this Christmas, so I decided to make my own.  It’s really easy.  I found this tutorial online at The Knitted Blog on how to do it.

So…again to the scrapbook stash.  I have a confession to make.  I am addicted to scrapbook paper, and I don’t scrapbook.  Not in the physical sense, anyway.  Any scrapbooking I do is entirely digital because I am far too indecisive to have to pay money for individual pieces I will change my mind about in five minutes, but I love the stupid paper.  I have this huge file box of paper I’ve had for years “just in case” for various paper crafting projects.  This is a great way to use up a bunch of this.  If you had double-sided scrapbook paper, these would be even cooler!

All you need is an envelope the finished size you want, paper, scissors, something to trace with, and a glue stick.  Simple, easy, and they turn out quite nice.  The scrapbook paper is even nicer because it’s thicker than some of the envelopes I already had, so I’m pretty sure my nice cards will survive the mail.  Looks like I spent a lot of time on these, doesn’t it?

That’s all for now.  My Christmas tree is returning home tomorrow after spending a year at my brother’s house, so hopefully I’ll get to crafting on ornaments!