Handmade Christmas Cards - Part One

This month the first of our Christmas Craft Boxes go out.  They contain; child friendly craft kits including materials and instructions to make;
6 hand-made Christmas cards,
2 Christmas trivets,
pom poms,
hand-made gift boxes,
concertina Christmas trees,
and a Father Christmas from a loo roll.
There is also a recipe for Christmas ginger cookies.

So, this November's Crafty box is filled with things to make for others and the hand-made Christmas cards have really caught our imaginations and that of our little foxes too.  It seems that their fascination is to be the expected, in fact Nina Fox has been telling me of her discovery on the origins of Christmas cards:

"Our modern day Christmas cards were almost certainly based on the 'Christmas Pieces' made by children in the early 18th century.
School children would write affectionate, often rhyming, messages to their families on special paper with an engraved border and then decorate them further before taking or sending them home.  These engraved Christmas papers were designed to show parents how well their children’s handwriting had improved over the past year, and are now rare and extremely sought after examples of children's artwork."

We hope that our suggestions and papers help our crafters to create sets of cards with a cohesive theme where the colours compliment, no matter how different the designs and shapes used are...

Those familiar with us will know that we do our upmost to ensure that everything in our monthly boxes that can be, will be, used somehow within the crafts.  We relish our self set challenge to recycle as much as is possible.  We tell our crafters that anything left over should not be thrown away as it will come in handy for future crafts and November's 'making Christmas cards' craft is a perfect example of how to use up remnants of paper snips too beautiful to have gone directly into the recycling.

If you have any card, thin cardboard, heavy paper or even last year's cards and some wrapping paper, you and your little one's can have fun making all the cards you need this year.  You will be recycling, having fun and reminding people that you think of them and love them, all rolled together in one fun activity.

We will be running a series of posts explaining how we made our designs (see below) with instructions so that you can make beautiful cards using materials you will probably have at home.

For even more ideas check out our "Handmade Cards" pinterest board.

http://www.pinterest.com/mrsfoxs/handmade-christmas-cards/