Most people wait until at least October to begin 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 begin scouring the Internet for new vintage Christmas clip art to add to my already huge collection. That always helps when I start creating handmade holiday cards in the fall. Because of that I don’t have to do any searching for images; I can just start creating the cards. Since that’s a lot of work in itself, I’m glad to have the images already on my hard drive.

One thing I do leave for December, though, is creating Santa letters for all the kids I know. These can’t be mailed until late November or early December because they’re sent to the post office at the North Pole to be stamped with a special postmark. They’re then mailed to the kids in stamped, addressed envelopes I provide. The process takes less than 2 weeks, so I don’t want to mail them too early. Children get excited enough about Christmas without any help; they don’t need letters from Santa before Thanksgiving! But it does make me happy to watch them tear open those letters from Santa. Because I create them, I can insert personal details that promote the illusion that the letters really come from him. If they have toys they’ve been wanting, “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 include that they have to get along with everyone in the family if they want their Christmas presents. Nothing like a little pressure from St. Nick to get kids to behave!

Once my handmade Christmas cards and Santa letters are in the mail, I still can’t rest. I like to make handmade New Year cards for a select few friends and family, along with a custom e-mail New Years greeting for the rest. For those I dip into my collection of new year clip art. 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:

• Print the cards either on pre-cut, pre-folded cards you can get from the stationary store, or on the heaviest regular card stock your printer will allow.
• If your printer will take photo paper, you can print the images separately from the cards, and cut them out and paste them onto the card fronts.
• Lovely specialty and metallic papers are available that you can use to frame the images by cutting pieces slightly larger than the artwork. You can find these at discount stores such as Walmart, or at craft stores.
• Glitter glue that comes in “pens” are great for adding shine to images. But don’t get carried away with it! The cards may warp and also have a tendency to look overdone.