Better Concerts and Music

Many people wait until at least Halloween before they start thinking about Christmas, but not yours truly. I love Christmas. Although I have to admit that I’m happy to move onto other things right after the holiday is over; by May I’m ready to give it another go. It’s about that time that I start looking around the Internet to see if I can find any new Christmas images to expand my already large collection. That puts me ahead of the game when I start creating my handmade Christmas cards in the autumn. Because of that I don’t have to search for images when I’m ready to begin; I can just move right onto being creative and building the cards. Since that’s a lot of work in itself, I’m always happy to have image searching out of the way.

One aspect I do leave until right before Christmas, though, is creating Santa Claus letters for the kids in my family. These can’t be mailed until the beginning of December because they actually have to be sent to a post office located at the North Pole for a postmark. After that, they’re mailed to the kids in stamped, addressed envelopes I provide. That process only takes 10 days to a few weeks, so I don’t want to mail them too early. Children get excited enough about Christmas without any help; they don’t need to get letters from St. Nick before they’ve even had Thanksgiving turkey! But it does bring me joy to watch them tear open those letters from Santa. Because I make them myself, I’m able to put in details to promote the illusion that the letters really come from him. If they have toys on their Christmas lists, “Santa” lets them think that they’ll only get them if they behave well. If there’s a lot of figthing between brothers and sisters around the time the letters are sent, I also say they must get along with everyone in the house if they want their Christmas presents. Nothing like some good, old fashioned pressure from Santa Claus to get kids to mind!

And I still can’t rest even after I get my holiday cards and letters from Santa mailed. I always make handmade New Year cards for select friends and family members, along with a custom e-mail New Years greeting for the rest. For those I dip into my collection of new year clipart. I make the handmade versions pretty elaborate, since I don’t have to make that many. They’re a lot of fun to make and I love creating them.

If you’d like to make your own holiday cards, here are some tips:

• Use pre-cut, pre-folded cards from the stationary store, or on the thickest card stock that will go through your printer.
• If you have a printer that will accommodate photo paper, you can print the images on different stock from the cards, and trim them down and then paste them to the front of the cards.
• Lovely specialty and metallic papers are available that can be cut slightly larger than the image size and used to frame the artwork. These can be found at discount stores such as Target, or at craft stores.
• Glitter glue that comes in “pens” are great for adding shine to images. Just don’t use too much! If you do, the cards will not only look cheesy, they will also warp.