Tips for Creating Festive Christmas Cards and Letters

Hi Guideposts. I’m Lisa Bogart. One of my favorite parts of the holiday is when Christmas cards start arriving in the mail. For one thing, I can open them before Christmas. But I also liked sending mail out and decorating letters is half the fun for me.

A personal note in the mail, hand-addressed, is so special. I hope you’ll take the time this year to do that, then the party starts the minute they pull the letters out of your mailbox. Even if you think you don’t have any artistic talent, just using different colored pens for each line of the address will add so much sparkle to your mail.

This year when I was trying to think of ways to decorate my holiday letter, I decided to cheat and use the cookie cutters in my kitchen. I took each cookie cutter. I drew around the outside of it. Then I outlined each one, made a few crosshatches, so it looks like it’s been stitched onto the page. And to add to the illusion, I’m going to put a little needle up here in the corner. It looks like it’s poking through the page. And I put a little dotted line all the way around the edge so that it looks like the whole thing’s been stitched. Yeah!

Black and white is fine, but let’s add some color. Decorate my bell, stripes on my candy cane, ornaments on my tree and a face on my gingerbread man. And because I can’t help myself, a little confetti. There you go. My holiday letter is ready to go.

Just using a different color for each address line, makes the letters look festive. Let’s try something a little more advanced. How about a few sprigs of holly? Don’t forget the zip code. Adding some snowflakes to this letter is not going to be hard, a plus and a cross. Super easy.

How about this sweet idea? You could add some candy to it. You can do it too. It’s just a circle, two little dots, triangle for the wrapper and then another plus and a cross. And you’ve got some sweet peppermint on this one.

I’d encourage you to decorate your holiday letters this year. It’s a lot of fun. And mail like this certainly says, “Merry Christmas, I love you” before they’ve even opened the envelope.