Christmas Card Ideas

Hello December and hello to manic Christmas crafting which is a customary part of our papercrafting hobby, or is that just me? Well this is not quite the blog post I thought I’d be writing. I sat down at my desk a few days ago to make my Creative Team projects with the Simple Stories ‘Mistletoe Collection’. Luckily I checked the stock levels first, because I found that most of the items I was going to use were no longer in stock, eek! That’s the trouble with Christmas lines, you have to be quick to grab the things you like before they’re gone. I quickly rethought my plans, grabbed what I had in my stash that’s still in stock and came up with 12 Christmas cards. So fellow Magpie’s, here are some ideas for cards you can make using mainly patterned papers, Nuvo Crystal Drops and Glossy Accents!
Let’s begin with Simple Stories – Mistletoe Kisses. For the first two cards I used the 4×6 Horizontal Elements Foiled Paper, cutting a couple of the 4×6″ elements to use on 5×7″ cards. I made the card blanks from white cardstock.

This card has been mounted on a 6.5×4.5″ piece of Christmas Magic paper, such a fun paper! I placed an enamel dot from the collection in each corner and coated the lights with Glossy Accents. It adds a lovely dimensional shine to the lights without dulling or obscuring the colours.

For my next card I covered the card blank with a 5×7″ piece of Holly Jolly paper and adhered the Let it Snow 4×6″ cut apart on top rounding the top corners. I layered several torn strips of white tissue paper (wrapping from my Hey Little Magpie order) and glued a piece of white cardstock along the bottom. I trimmed a red strip from the Christmas Magic paper (a diagonal stripe) and glued it to the white cardstock strip, adding a few sparkly enamel dots from the collection.

As a little extra touch I added Glossy Accents to the snowman’s eyes, nose, arms, scarf and buttons, then dotted randomly with the bottle to add snowflakes.

For my next batch of cards I dipped into the other Simple Stories Christmas collection – Classic Christmas.

For this 4×4″ card I fussy cut a flower from the ‘Tis the Season’ paper along with 3 holly leaves from one side of the paper and the word ‘peace’ from the other side. The flower is stuck down in the middle leaving the petals free to be curled up, the leaves were folded in half and tucked under the petals. The sentiment ‘peace’ was popped up on foam pads with a glitter enamel dot from the Cocoa Vanilla Studio ‘Make a Wish’ collection placed slightly under. Lastly I added three drops of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Autumn Red on top of the red berries printed on the paper.
I made another 4×4″ card using the handwritten side of the ‘Tis the Season’ paper backed with the striped side of the ‘Fun & Frosty’ paper. I edged the paper with a black ink pad and added holly leaves and berries with more Nuvo Crystal Drops, the red is as before and the green is ‘Woodland Green’.

I just love the mix of these two papers, the handwritten words with the candy stripe and it goes beautifully with the teal blue of the American Crafts paper ‘Snowflakes’ from their All Wrapped Up Christmas collection.

I covered the top half of an A6 card blank in the SS ‘Tis the Season’ paper, the bottom half in the AC ‘Snowflake’ paper and covered the join in a 1/2″ strip of SS ‘Fun & Frosty’ paper. I made a matching bow and placed it on this middle strip. It’s made from a 3″ strip of paper bent over at each end and held in place in the middle with double-sided tape. A second thinner strip is then folded around the middle and secured in place with double-sided tape. I added a little sparkle with three aqua enamel dots from the Cocoa Vanilla Studio’s Make a Wish collection.
The following two cards use a sweet paper from the Pebbles – Holly Jolly collection called ‘Holiday Village’. The first is combined with a strip of the American Crafts ‘Snowflake’ paper and a sentiment sticker from the My Mind’s Eye – Sugar Plum collection Gift Tags sticker sheet with two little enamel dots from the Simple Stories Mistletoe Kisses collection.

This card would be super easy to batch produce by replacing the sentiment sticker with a typed or handwritten sentiment on cardstock, the enamel dots can be replaced with Nuvo Crystal Drops, but remember a drying time will be required.
When I first saw the Pebbles ‘Holiday Village’ paper it made me think it would be cool to use in a snowglobe card, so that’s what I made, well a simple form of one anyway!

I cut a circle aperture in an A6 kraft card blank and inked the edges of the circle in dark grey. I backed the aperture with a piece of the reverse side of Holiday Village paper, trimmed a scene from the front side of the paper and glued into the bottom of the ‘globe’. I trimmed a piece of the spotty brand strip from the bottom of the same paper for the base of the snowglobe and added three gold glitter enamel dots from the Cocoa Vanilla Studio – Make a Wish collection. I added a sentiment cut from the ‘Tis the Season’ paper mounted on foam pads and inked the card edges in white.
My final batch use papers from the My Mind’s Eye Collection – Sugar Plum which is utterly delicious. I’ve made 5 different cards using two papers; ‘Berry‘ and ‘Cheer‘ the Gift Tag Sticker Sheet.

Here is a 15cm square card blank with the front side of the ‘Cheer’ paper layered on the reverse side of the same paper and a Joy sticker which is backed on a circle of scrap cardstock and mounted on foam pads to lift it away the card.

This is a little 4×4″ card with a 3″ square of ‘Cheer’ paper topped with a cute sticker from the gift tag pack. I’ve added a ring of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Duck Egg (my favourite) and added it to the snowflakes printed on the sticker too. Finally I added a little Glossy Accents over the red heart on the door. NB. It’s recommended that you let the Nuvo Crystal Drops dry for 24 hours on a flat surface so bear that in mind when using them. I personally don’t think it takes that long, certainly not for these sized dots anyway!

My next card also uses these lovely duck egg drops, this time to cover a join in the papers and along the bottom of a sticker. The main paper is the reverse side of the ‘Berry’ paper, the other is the ‘Cheer’ paper and the sentiment is from the Gift Tag Sticker sheet.


I used a different colour of drops for the next card called Wedgewood Blue, although I think it looks more grey than blue. The paper is the reverse side of the ‘Cheer’ paper and the sentiment comes from the Gift Tag Sticker sheet again. It’s a great value sticker sheet for £1.99.

For my final card I fussy cut a flower and three leaves from the ‘Berry‘ paper and adhered them on top of another piece of the ‘Berry’ paper. The great thing about this paper is that all the flowers are the same, yay no tedious matching necessary. I used glue dots to adhere the flower and leaves, curling up the petals and leaves to make them come to life. I typed a sentiment on cardstock, cut it into a banner and popped it up on foam pads. I added Glossy Accents to the yellow centre of the flower and duck egg Nuvo Crystal Drops on the sentiment strip and on the white spots on the paper. I inked the card edges with a blue chalk ink pad to highlight the glittered blue sprigs.

Well there you have it, 12 cards from a handful of supplies which are still in stock, at the time of posting this anyway, so be quick if anything takes your fancy! Oh and if you like the bottle brush trees I’ve used in my photos they are by Fancy Pants Designs – Merry & Bright collection and come in four different sizes; these shown are 3″ tall, there’s also 5″, 4″ tall and little 2″ tall ones or there’s some available in the Crate Paper – Snow & Cocoa collection here.
Thank you for stopping by, I hope you have a very merry Christmas!