Christmas Cards made or bought?

I never thought that making Christmas Cards was my 'thing'. Card making was hard, it never came out the way I saw it in my mind so I just didn't do it - until 2009 when my cousin Michelle began to come to my house to scrapbook with me. She came every tuesday stayed for two hours and we would laugh and talk and put the world to rights but all the time we were either doing a scrapbook page from a pagemap or deciding which family pictures we wanted to share for our albums. She said she made cards and sold them for charity. She brought a pile of used cards and we cut the fronts off them and I helped her make new cards. I did pyramage when there were several of the same card. I did decoupage too. Both things I had never done before because they were not my 'thing'.

I thought I would have a go at making some just to send to the family - just to see if I could. I made 40 cards for family and suddenly realised that less is definitely more and in future my cards would be simple. I try to use whatever I have in the bits box which makes me feel good as I am saving a tree or two but the very best thing is that this year Little Miss is growing up and is now old enough to really help. Her cutting out skills are excellent. I stamped s whole load of baubles onto plain white paper and used some puffer paints that I found in Costco to decorate them. When they were dry I used the heat gun to puff the paint and then let Little Miss cut around them, making sure to keep the little ring at the top. She cut out 48 of them!

This project took us several evenings after school and made the time she had to wait for Mummy to come home from work just fly by. In total we made 100 card for me, 20 each for her mummy and two uncles and we also made 100 for TENOVUS, a local cancer charity.

Part of a goody bag I got from Create and Craft TV at NEC (even though I didn't actually go) were 24 decoupage sheets of Christmas toppers so we used those too.

So this year all my cards were hand made and it really felt good to put them into the envelopes and post them. I will make more for next year.

What happens if I don't make enough? well I will buy some from TENOVUS that's what, I won't be beating myself up over not doing a few cards because I will still have my apprentice and we will be doing even better stuff after school in our own special craft club.