We don’t know about you, but we’re starting to hear Christmas bells ring here at Close To My Heart! (Yes, we know it’s still two months away…😬) In all seriousness, the holiday season is right around the corner, and if Christmas cards are your jam, it’s time to start planning for these festive creations! What we have to show you today is truly special, as it allows you to celebrate your dearest relationships and memories by showcasing your favorite photos, right on the front of each card! It also puts a brand-new twist on a favorite art technique—shaker cards! Picture This Christmas is a beautiful way not only to flex your creative muscles, but celebrate your relationships with the people closest to you.
Our Picture This Christmas special is built on the idea that your own personal photos have an incredible power to inspire joy in those you love most, and who doesn’t love to inspire joy and share their legacy? 😄 We are all about expressing and sharing the products of your creativity with those closest to you, and the holiday season is a prime time to do this! Let’s take a look at the amazing opportunities available through the Picture This Christmas special and how you can use these cards to spread a little extra Christmas cheer among friends and family.
One amazing thing about Picture This Christmas cards is the ease with which they come together. Picture This Christmas cards were designed with the Close To My Heart Cut Above® format, which means that the creative process takes just a few minutes from start to finish, and you’re left with an absolutely stunning card at the end of it! With Cut Above® projects, each workshop kit contains pre-cut paper pieces, die-cuts, stickers, and even pre-printed card bases, so all you need to create your cards apart from the Cut Above® kit itself are your choice of adhesive, and a journaling pen to inscribe your personal message on the inside of the cards. Cut Above® projects are a great option for crafters of all types and experience levels.hey can serve as an easy starting point for crafters just discovering this mode of creativity. For more experienced crafters, they make a quick project that they can do in a short amount of time, with minimal effort, whether to wind down or just to catch up on a few crafting goals! With Cut Above®, there are a wealth of creative possibilities to help you realize your crafting vision, whatever it may be!
To showcase just how easy it can be to create with the Picture This Christmas Cut Above® card kits, we’re going to go through each step of how these cards came together. For our Picture This Christmas cards, we start off with a pre-printed, pre-cut card base, measuring 5” x 7”. These cards are larger than our standard 4¼” x 5½” cards for a very special reason. As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, the cards in a Picture This Christmas kit are designed to feature your own personal photos, and by providing a 5” x 7” card base, your cards can comfortably accommodate a 4” x 6” photo!
With card base in hand as a starting place, we next attached a photo to it, taking care to center it, and then continued by attaching the provided frame die-cut. As with the photo in the previous step, make sure to take care when placing your frame, aligning the corners of the die-cut with the corners of your photo. By taking extra care when placing your photo and die-cut frame, you will be left with a more polished card at the end.
After placing the photo and attaching the frame die-cut over it, we used the provided evergreen branch and pennant sentiment die-cuts to add some extra flair and pizazz to the corners of the photo. The addition of these die-cuts helps to add some depth to the photo, and definitely ups the visual interest of the overall card.
And just like that, with only a few simple steps, we created a beautiful, polished card with a one-of-a-kind personal touch! This card, while simple, is an excellent example of how a Cut Above® kit can be used to incredible effect as a quick and easy crafting solution.
If you’re wanting to take the creative process a little further with your own Picture This Christmas cards, we have an outstanding option for that as well! Let’s take a look at how you can really shake things up and take this card design to the next level by adding a full cardfront shaker window!
To create Picture This Christmas cards with shaker windows, we started out by centering the photo on the base, and then attached a perimeter of 3-D Foam Tape and added a few pinches of sequins or other shaker window fill pieces to the center, directly over the photo. To make this a quick and easy process, we offer three different Picture This Christmas Shaker Window Card kits with Gold, Silver, and Iridescent Flower Sequin options.
Once we made our shaker element selection and added it to the center of the photo, we carefully trimmed a 5” x 7” piece of clear acetate from the 12” x 12” sheets included with the Picture This Christmas Shaker Window Card kits and centered it over the photo and base, making sure to line up the corners. Once the acetate was secured, we centered the die-cut frame over the acetate and base and embellished it at the corners with the provided die-cuts. After this final step, our shaker card is complete, and we’re left with a stunning and uniquely personal card, perfect to send to a loved one or friend!
As a fun, final touch, Picture This Christmas also includes the 5” x 7” Envelope Flap Thin Cuts to decorate the flaps of your card envelopes, as well as an exclusive stamp set to add sentiments to the interior of your cards! These stamps and Thin Cuts can be used to further personalize and set your cards apart!
No matter who you choose to send your cards to, or which photos you decide to feature on them, your Picture This Christmas cards are a beautiful reflection of your memories and identity, and are certain to be treasures for years to come! What photos will you showcase on your Picture This Christmas cards? Tell us all about it in the comments below!
