DIY Holiday Cards

I have a bit of an obsession with holiday cards. I love getting them, I love sending them, after the holidays I keep them in a wooden box for way too long... I love the everything about them! Over the past few years, I've sent out fairly basic cards - the kind with a cute pattern on the front, but blank on the inside. It worked well. I mean, who doesn't like penguins and candycanes (not on the same card)? But this year I got all inspired and shit. Buzzfeed had a post of DIY Holiday Cards, so obviously I couldn't help but look through. And fine, plenty of them have way too much Do, but some looked cute! So I thought, "What the hell, why not?"

One trip to the paper store and several glasses of wine later, success! So I decided to do fingerprint holiday lights - fairly simple, fairly inexpensive supplies, fairly little effort. Seemed like a good option to start this whole thing off. Of course, the very first thing I did (after asking my Charming Assistant to pour me some wine) was to create a template. Can't have my cards looking all willy-nilly, I needed something to go off of!

As you can see, I struggled a little deciding how to write the actual greeting. Never mind, we'll address that later. But so - a basic template for my string of holiday lights. The weird swirly things are where the "lights" will go - gotta have an idea so your card won't get too crowded! Next came doing that for all the cards!

There you go - strands of soon-to-be lights and the ink I'll be using. As a side note, the Color Box was fun, but the pink, green, and dark blue/purple all left something to be desired. You'll see.

All right, they're starting to look as though they might be actual Christmas lights, not just poorly made barbed wire. Go me!

Hey, those look like something you might actually put up on your front porch! Rock on! But something is missing...

Oh, there we go! Now these are things that I could send out without being embarrassed! (Side note - always have to use spell check to get that right. One of those things, you know?) Each card also had a short little note on the back to personalize it. Cause I'm personable like that!

After some trial and error, I've figured out that about eight lights is optimum - more than that and the card looks a little sloppy. Also, you need to have a good balance of red, yellow, and blue - then you can throw in a green and a purple for some interest. Finally, if you can't find the black Sharpie that you're sure you had somewhere in your home, the deep blue felt tip pen will work nicely.

So there you go! Some DIY holiday cards, poorly photographed! Rock on!