Christmas Card Idea

Did you know that in 47 days Christmas will be here.WOW!!! At this time of year, every year, I wonder where the time has gone.Today, I thought I would share with you an idea that you will love. And it enables you to save from year to year some of those special holiday cards you receive.

What do you do with all the holiday cards you receive?? Do you save them?? And then what happens to them?? Oh, they get stored in a box and they never see the light of day again?? OK, a lot of us are like that. Well here is a great way to show the cards off again and put then on display especially if you will be entertaining throughout the holidays.

Get an old book, go to the Thrift Shop in your area and pick up one if you don't have a book you want to part with. Any title will do. Next gather up the cards that you want to use.  Next count how many cards you are using and divide that number into the total number of pages in your book.The number will represent approximately pages you will have in each section. Next section off the number of pages per section, using binder clips or large paper clips. Now, using white glue, paint glue on the page edges of each section. You will want to get the page edges pretty wet but not drippy. Let dry. (I actually put waxed paper between the sections to keep the sections separated while drying.) I let this dry overnight. While your book is drying, cut the card fronts off the cards and anything else from the card that you will be using, make sure to keep all your card elements together from each of the cards. Maybe you want to use just the card front, that is what I did but I also used some of the sentiments too. After the glue on the page edges is dry paint the front and back of the book. I used acrylic paint in champagne gold, love this color. This gold color is soft and not too brassy. After the front and back of the book is dry, paint the edges of the sections in the same gold color. Let all the paint dry.

Now the fun begins. In this step I decided the order of the cards and painted the printed pages with a color that went with that card. It could be a contrasting color or a color that was the same as the card, but you want your card to stand out on the page not to be buried in the page.You will be painting the printed pages of each glued section. After the paint is dry I affixed the cards on their respective pages. Lastly I added embellishments to add further interest. You can see that I trimmed a lot of the cards to fit into the book to make the cards look like they belonged on that page. I had a few cards that I actually cut the card front in half because the card was just too big. I even stamped on some of the pages, but you could add stickers too if you wanted. Brads and buttons are also cool embellishments, as well as die cuts. Let your imagination go wild.

 

This is a great way to preserve special cards and to be able to display them the following year. You can even add the year to the front of the book so you can remember what year you received your special cards.

How cool is that.

Tomorrow I will show you another re purposed item that you can use for a Christmas package  or a birthday gift or whatever the occasion is. See you then.

Well, that's it for now, thanks for stopping by,

Barbara