She Who Makes: Scrapbook your Christmas Cards & Photos

2005. I was pretty new to the whole idea.

Other side of 2005 version. Like I said.

Here's an idea of what to do with your Christmas cards and all those family & friends photos that come in the mail around the holidays every year. (Well, less and less of them maybe than before the digital age, but I still get a pretty big pile and I expect you do to -- and I really don't have the heart or interest in throwing them out.) You could just keep them all in a box somewhere, that's fine, but if you are a scrapbooker you may want to try this approach.

It's pretty easy -- divide your collection into two piles, cards and photos. Then, if you have a square punch (anywhere from 1 1/4" to 2" works) just start punching the cards up; you can pick out portions of the cards that you like best or just be random. (If you don't have a punch just cut the cards up into equally sized squares.) Then crop the photos into a manageable size -- some years I've made them all the same size but most of the time I leave them different sizes.

2006... not so sure about the red background.

Here's the 2007 version. The little reindeer came from a card.

Take one or two pieces of 12x12 cardstock and start arranging the cropped photos into a pleasing pattern. Some years these arrangements have been pretty straightforward, some years it's gotten kinda chaotic! This will be a BUSY page but no worries, you will love it anyway!

Once you have the photos arranged the way you like them (you can of course solicit the input of your children if you like!) go ahead and arrange the punched pieces around the photos. You can add an embellishment if you like -- often there will be one Christmas card that has something dimensional on it that you can carefully remove and use on your page!

Add the year (stickers work well for this but you could handwrite or stamp it) and then make sure you journal around each photo with the names of those in the pictures!

In 2008 I divided up the cards & photos and made separate pages.

If you like you can add a border strip or some other decoration but most likely your page will be fine without anything else!

Another idea -- if you have an extra of the card that you sent out this year, you can include it on your page. (I did this in 2006 -- that paper pieced tree in the bottom left corner is what went on my Christmas cards that year.)