Day 19 of Christmas Crafting: Our Christmas Card

After going the Costco photo card route for a couple of years, I decided I wanted to go back to making our card this year.  Now that I am finally making time to craft again, it seemed like a cop out to order a photo card, plus I was excited to do it.  After promising Patrick that our homemade card would not cost more than a Costco photo card, I got creative.

My first stop was at my Stampin' Up catalog.  Patrick's cousin Jen is a consultant for them, and I was one years ago.  I remain quite fond of their products, so I knew I wanted to use one of their stamp sets for our card.  I had spied one when I first flipped though the catalog.  It is called Christmas Greetings (found here), and I loved the message.  So, I ordered that awhile back, and have been trying to figure out what the rest of the card would look like.

My second stop was at Snapfish.  We had taken a field trip in November to try and take some family pics for our Christmas card.  Out of the hundreds of shots we took, I managed to find 3 I liked.  (Let me tell ya, a photo shoot with a toddler is no cup of tea, especially when you are trying to wrangle said toddler, pose for the shot, and operate the camera! Thank goodness for Patrick, tripods, and camera remotes.)  Well, Snapfish sells collage prints for the same price as their regular prints, plus they were having a 40% off everything sale the day I ordered.  Score!  We had our picture for the card.

My last stop was my craft closet.  I am trying to embrace the "use what you've got" mentality with my crafting this Christmas.  I have lots of leftover paper and ribbons from craft projects of yore, so I wanted to see if I could create our Christmas card using what I had.  Surprisingly, I was able to.  It just took a bit of flexibility.  Here are the supplies I ended up using:

 

• "Christmas Greetings" Stampin' Up stamp set $10.95
• Martha Stewart snowflake punch (already owned)
• Red and teal grosgrain ribbon (already owned)
• Stampin' Up Classic stamp pads in Real Red, Night of Navy, and Lucky Limeade $5.95 (the red and navy were already owned)
• Stampin' Up Craft stamp pad in White (already owned)
• An assortment of scrapbook paper cut into 2x6 inch strips (already owned)
• An assortment of cardstock in white and a variety of blues (already owned)
• Photo collage prints $4.05
• Mono-adhesive
• Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive

The variety of scrapbook paper and colored cardstock is due to my flexibility.  I did not have enough of any one print or color to make all the cards I need.  So I chose to go with coordinating prints and shades of blue to make substiutions as easy as possible.  

The design of our card is nothing new.  I've done variations on this design countless times.  But there's a reason for that.  I like the simple, yet colorful design. It's easy to put together but looks very polished.  Nothing wrong with that!  

Without further ado, here's our 2011 Christmas card:

Here's the inside:

The top of the inside (I left a bit of room for a short personal message):

And the bottom of the inside:

I'm pleased that for less than $25 I was able to make 75 personalized Christmas cards.  Well, in the spirit of keepin' it real, I've actually only made two so far.  Guess it's time to post this and start tackling the rest!

Any other homemade cards out there this year?