Handmade Christmas Cards - Part Two

The first Christmas Card shows a scene of a family raising a toast to the Holiday Season

Our modern Christmas cards can be traced to a card printed in December 1843 by Sir Henry Cole, the first Director of theV&A.  Sir Henry found it time consuming to write greetings and best wishes to all his friends and family at Christmas and so he commissioned John Callcott Horsley to illustrate a card with a single greeting: 'A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You".  Sir Henry had also been involved in the introduction of the penny post in the UK three years before so he had something of a vested interest in the success of this new form of holiday communications.  His print run of 2050 cards sold for a shilling each (a weeks wages) and only 12 of these cards remain today.

We of course love the hand-made variety.  For the last few weeks we have been churning out hand-made Christmas cards at a phenomenal rate. The exchanging of Christmas cards can also be traced back to the "Christmas Pieces" made by children in the early 18th century.   Children copied out texts at school in their best hand writing and decorated them to give to their parents.  Intended to show parents how well their children were doing at school, these are some of the earliest examples of children's art.

Very much in that tradition Little Una Fox used her new sewing skills to create this lovely card for her Uncle David in Canada:

You Will Need:
5 or 6 different buttons
needle & thread
card & envelope
pencil, pen &/or  letter stamps

Instructions:
We first wrote "Merry Christmas" along the bottom of the card - we used our letter stamps but you can simply write this in colourful letters in your best hand writing.

We decided where the buttons would go and then drew the lines and bows onto the card in pencil first to get the spacing right.  Then went over this in black pen.

We then carefully, with needle and thread, sewed each button into position with just a couple of stitches, knotting the ends of the thread at the end.

Last month's Mrs Fox's Crafty Box contained card blanks and envelopes so that our crafty little foxes could make Christmas cards for friends and family.  They are also included in our Bumper Christmas Crafty Box that includes a whole host of Christmas crafts and is available for £15 +p&p.

The little foxes came up with so many designs for Christmas cards that we've been posting all last week with ideas for hand-made Christmas cards, we’ve also put together the best of other people’s ideas on a board on our pinterest site.  So with oodles of inspiration at the click of a mouse, we would love you to send us some pictures of your creations, we could add them to the gallery.

For loads more Christmas craft ideas including more designs for handmade Christmas cards CLICK HERE