Winter is fast approaching! Are you looking forward to winter card making?
I am!
Actually, I have already begun making cards to send during the winter holiday season this year.
In the Winter season, people typically indulge in baking breads and sweets or having fun with winter sports like sledding, skiing and ice skating.
At this time of year, we card makers have historically drawn inspiration from a broad variety of sources when we choose which card designs we’ll focus on making:
- Winter weather and the motifs that relate to it, like snowflakes and snowpeople;
- Winter activities, like snowball wars and Christmas caroling;
- Baked goods like gingerbread;
- Winter-resistant critters like cardinals, penguins, deer / reindeer, and polar bears;
- And wintry landscapes filled with evergreen trees.
The Winter holidays also typically provide inspiration for many card makers; we enjoy making cards to celebrate a variety of winter holidays:
- Christmas Eve;
- Christmas Day;
- Kwanzaa;
- Hanukkah (sometimes — the date of this holiday changes each year, but it’s technically more typical for Hanukkah to happen in fall than winter);
- Winter solstice;
- New Year’s Eve;
- New Year’s Day;
- Valentine’s Day;
- and others. (If I missed your favorite, please comment!)
Some of winter’s most popular motifs, like candy canes, Christmas trees, poinsettias, reindeer, elves and Santa Claus are associated with these holidays.
Other winter-friendly motifs such as hearts, snowflakes, evergreen trees, yetis and polar bears can be used for holiday card making projects, but they can also continue to be used for winter card making long after the holidays are over.
Card makers frequently also use lyrics from Christmas carols and popular Christmas songs as card sentiments.
If you celebrate Christmas, but you can’t think of a theme for the Christmas cards you want to make, you can come up with bunches of ideas simply by humming your own favorite Christmas tunes. Think “Jingle Bells,” “Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer,” “I’ll be home for Christmas,” “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas,” and “Angels we have heard on high.” Don’t those song titles spark all kinds of fun card-making ideas and imagery in your imagination?
If you’re hoping to find project ideas and inspiration for winter card making, you’ll be delighted to find a variety of tutorials and projects for creating your own cards that incorporate festive poinsettias, Santas and evergreen trees, along with polar bears, yetis and 2024’s other trendiest winter-friendly motifs.
Christmas Cards
Christmas cards can be cutesy and playful; they can be casual and homey; or they can be elegant and luxurious. You’ll want to tailor the cards you make and choose a mood or style that best suits the card’s recipients.
For example, the fun, cutesy Christmas card designs are ideal to give to little kids (or to kids-at-heart; the grownups who collect Beanie Babies or other toys are also good prospective recipients for these types of Christmas cards).
Doodlebug Designs is a manufacturer that makes super cute Christmas-themed craft supplies you’ll want to consider using for your holiday card making efforts. I used Doodlebug’s die cuts from the “Candy Cane Lane” collection and papers from their “Snow Much Fun” collection to make the Santa Claus themed Christmas card pictured above.
Elegant Candy Cane Themed Christmas Card
If you’re hoping to make Christmas cards that are over-the-top gorgeous, there are some products that should be on your radar.
The first product you need to know about is Altenew’s Elegant Swirls stencil, which I used to make the background on the Christmas card pictured above.
This stencil isn’t specifically a Christmas stencil; it’s actually an everyday design. However, it works really well for making stenciled images to suit any fancy occasion, including but not limited to Christmas.
You’ll also want to know about Scrapbook.com’s “Pops of Color,” which you can use with your stencils to make sophisticated backgrounds like the one pictured here. I used the Seafoam Pearl-colored pops of color to create the stenciled background for this card design.
There are bunches of different effects you can get from the Pops of Color; some of them are pearlescent; some of them are glittery; and some of them are glossy. They’re all fantastic!
Other than that, the card is pretty simple; it just requires some foam tape, some stickers and a few other doodads to complete it. You can find more details about this card design HERE.
See Also: Candy Cane Crafts
Festive Poinsettia Cards
Make Sparkling Christmas Cards Featuring Elegant White Poinsettia Motifs
I purchased Ciao Bella’s “Sparkling Christmas” vellum pad and one of their coordinating “Sparkling Christmas” damask stamp sets with the intention of using them to make Christmas cards.
I haven’t yet made any of the cards I’m planning with this collection, but I will let you know what I come up with. You’re invited to subscribe to my craft newsletter if you’d like to be updated when I make new projects available in the future!
In the meanwhile, if you’re hoping to make Christmas cards featuring poinsettia motifs, I highly recommend taking a look at the “Sparkling Christmas” collection. These supplies are exquisite, and there is an entire page in the 6×6 vellum fussy cut paper pack that’s devoted to usable images of lovely white poinsettias with green foliage. I found the entire pack of designs super inspiring – perfect to use for Christmas card making, December Daily layouts or any other Christmas paper crafting activity.
Poinsettias are one of my favorite winter design themes. Below, I’m sharing more poinsettia-themed cards from winters past, but please be aware that it is now getting hard to find the “Time to Flourish” collection of patterned papers that I used to make these designs. Of course, you can use any patterned papers to make your winter holiday cards — so feel free to adapt these ideas for use with other papers that are now available.
Holiday Wishes Card Featuring Red Poinsettias
Very Merry Christmas Card Featuring Poinsettia Flowers
Red, Green and White “Celebrate the Season” Christmas / Holiday Card
This festive slimline card could be a Christmas card if you make it in shades of red, green and white, as pictured.
However, this card making idea could be a jumping-off point for making cards to celebrate virtually any holiday or occasion.
>For example, some quick color changes could make this a Valentine’s Day card instead of a Christmas card.
Instead of using green dotted cardstock, a green frame and green paint, you could use pink supplies; then choose a Valentine-friendly sentiment stamp instead of the Christmas greeting I used to make the project sample. With those easy changes, the card would become a suitable Valentine’s Day design.
General Winter-Themed Cards
Polar Bear Cards
Valentine Cards
I have a separate page that’s specifically dedicated to the topic of Valentine’s Day card making ideas; I invite you to visit that page for bunches more romantic, lovey-dovey card making ideas.
The page also includes some card making ideas that aren’t intended to be romantic at all, because there are lots of lonely people out there who aren’t “coupled up.” If your inner circle includes some of those people, and you’re a kindhearted soul who doesn’t want them to feel left out of the Valentine fun, you can send them some love in the form of a handmade card. So, this project idea list includes some fun, friendly Valentine card making ideas that omit all mentions of “undying love” and “happily ever after”.
So that’s my roundup of winter card making ideas!
I hope you enjoyed checkout out these winter cards. I hope you found some card making project ideas you can use! Happy crafting!
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By Amy Solovay
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About the Author:
Amy Solovay is a real, live, human content creator and educator who holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Sweet Briar College; she has also earned a separate Associate of Arts degree in textile design from FIDM LA (The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Los Angeles). She is NOT a robot and does not use artificial intelligence (AI) to write book reviews or articles for this website.
Amy learned to make cards as a small child, and she still enjoys card making techniques all these years later.
As an educator, Amy Solovay used to teach in-person college courses in trend forecasting, marketing and surface design at California Design College in Los Angeles.
If you’re interested in reading Amy’s personal blog, she invites you to visit her official website, AmySolovay.com; and, if you’re interested in earning income while spending time crafting, she encourages you to check out Crafterprise.com.
Over to You:
Are you making winter cards this year? How many cards have you made so far, and how are they turning out? Let’s talk about it in the comments.
This page was last updated on 11-8-2024.
