Don’t have a lot of time to spend with your kids making Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the World Wide Web is full of free images that can be used to create quick and easy Christmas craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage Christmas cards or free vintage Christmas clip art found online are simple to make, due to the fact that vintage images are versatile and also quite effective when it comes to delivering a holiday message. These pictures also usually cost nothing to download and their age puts them outside the range of copyright protection. That’s important for people who want to honor copyrights (as we all should).
Doing a fast Web search for “vintage Christmas” will net you a huge selection of no-cost images from which many fun crafts projects can be made. And, of course, if you don’t like vintage, contemporary Christmas clip art can also be used to produce beautiful projects.
Here are examples of three projects nearly anyone can make by using free art found online:
Holiday Gift Tags
You can actually find free holiday gift tags on the Internet but you can also make your own. Simply download the the image or images you like and paste them into a table in your word processing program. Make the table two columns by six or eight rows, depending on how tall you want the cards to be. Place your chosen art into every cell (or every other cell if you want to fold them), leaving room to write people’s names. Then, print the page onto card stock, cut them out using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. If you’d like to attach the cards to gifts with strings, use a hole punch in the corners of the cards.
Handmade Christmas Cards
Once you’ve gone online and downloaded the holiday image you would like to use, paste it into a Word, PowerPoint or OneNote document. You can size the card by adjusting the software’s settings. Place the image on one half of the card, so it can be folded in half after it’s printed. Print the card on card stock as heavy as your printer will allow, fold it and use a little glitter glue to make it sparkle. You can also make your own envelopes or just get some at the dollar store.
“Gather ‘Round the Family” Christmas Wreath
Crafting holiday wreath is easy and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you’ll need to have on-hand:
- 1 plain Styrofoam wreath ring (your choice as far as size)
- Green construction paper, cut in the shape of holly leaves approximately four inches long
- Free Christmas clipart or vintage cards of your choice (between two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
- Scissors
- A box of short straight pins
Ask everyone to write Christmas messages and the date on the holly-shaped paper leaves. Then, position them in a balanced way around the Styrofoam wreath and affix them with the straight pins. You might need to adjust the leaves to look good. The straight pins will make it easy to reposition the elements. (Just make sure to watch the little ones around the pins!) When you like the way the leaves look, pin clip art among the leaves. The result will be a custom wreath that reflects your family’s love every holiday season for a long time to come.
I hope you have a great time making these holiday craft projects and that you have a joyful holiday!
