Even though the economy has been strained this year, that doesn’t mean people still don’t want to be able to give lavish Christmas parties like they’re used to doing. The trick to doing this in a slow economy is to cut corners on aspects that won’t be noticeable. There’s no reason that can’t begin with the holiday invitations and include the decorations and any scrapbooks created to commemorate the event.

If you want to make your own invitations and you don’t want to use the invitations online, one of the means to do that is to use good Christmas images. Often you can find very nice images online. Just enter the search term “free Christmas clip art” and the type of image you want. For example, if you want Christmas tree clip art, enter those words or some variation of them in the search box. That will work with almost any theme you can think of, although the more obscure the theme, the less results a search will garner. If when you search you can locate images that have high resolution, you’ll open up more options for using it. That’s because that print projects such as invitations or decorations require high resolution images. You certainly wouldn’t want to use low-resolution clip art images because the end result won’t be clear. That would never do for a Christmas party invitation, thank you card or decorations.

Christmas clip art isn’t the only free resource you can find online. There are also many sites that present Christmas holly scrapbooking paper. Many scrapbooking paper and embellishment designers give away no-charge versions of their Christmas scrapbook layouts to promote scrapbook designs they sell or to get people to come to pages that have advertising. Use of either model means they have financial incentive to offer free scrapbook papers and embellishments. No matter why the free scrapbooking materials are offered, you win! There are almost as many Christmas scrapbook themes as there are stars in the sky, so that means you’ll probably be able to make Christmas party invitations and decorations from them if you can’t find suitable clip art. Themes can be about anything, from silly to retro and vintage to luxurious and classy, so chances are good you’ll find images you’ll like.

After all is said and done, all the clip art, scrapbook papers and embellishments can also be used to preserve holiday party memories forever in a scrapbook. This means the time you spend looking for images will pay off over and over!

The majority of people wait until at least October to begin thinking about Christmas, but not yours truly. That’s because I love Christmas. Though I do admit I’m quite happy to take a break 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 to see if I can find any new Christmas tree clip art to expand my already large collection. That puts me ahead of the game when I start creating handmade holiday cards in the autumn. That way I don’t have to search for images when I’m ready to begin; 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 aspect I do leave until right before Christmas, though, is the creation of free Santa letterhead 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. They’re then 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 letters from Santa before Thanksgiving! But it is gratifying to see how much they enjoy getting custom letters from Santa. Because I make them myself, I can insert personal details to 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 they’ve been fighting with their siblings at the time the letters are mailed, I also include that they have to get along with everyone in the family if they want their Christmas presents. Nothing like some good, old fashioned pressure from Santa to get kids to mind!

Once my handmade holiday cards and Santa letters are in the mail, I still can’t rest. I always make handmade New Year cards for select friends and family members, as well as an electronic greeting for everyone else. When I make those, I pick from my collection of New Year cards. I get quite elaborate with the handmade versions, 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 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.
• There are lovely metallic and specialty papers that you can use to frame the images by cutting pieces slightly larger than the artwork. These can be found at discount stores such as Walmart, or at craft stores.
• Glitter glue pens are great for adding shine to images. But don’t get carried away with it! If you do, the cards will not only look cheesy, they will also warp.