Homemade Christmas cards

So here is the penultimate post in my Christmas series - homemade Christmas cards (although we are actually using ours as thank you letters for afterwards :)

You can see my previous posts in the series here:

Our Christmas traditions 

Salt dough rainbow glitter ornaments 

How to make a Christmas Den in 4 easy steps
Cutest snowmen and reindeer doughnuts

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I love making things with D and Iz (although Iz can be slightly uncooperative at times!!). Think my creative side definitely comes out when I'm doing stuff with them, and is pretty dormant the rest of the time! Last year D made reindeer and Father Christmas cards:

D's cards last year

So this year we wanted to try something different.

D's fairy light fingerprints

D loves painting and is happy to get his hands messy - something I'm very proud of :) I can't remember where I first saw the idea for this card but I thought it was great and so we tried it this year.

First I put dollops of our Neon paints (same ones we used for our blacklight bath painting - love these paints from Rainbow Creations online shop) in D's paint tray and then let him put his index finger in one colour at a time. He then 'finger-printed' the card with a whole mix of colours. 

A trial run just playing with the paints

The fingerprint "lights"

Once they'd dried I added on a string to make them look more like fairy lights - don't they look cute?!

 

The finished cards :)

And if you're wondering - yes these also glowed under our blacklight :)

You could use this for any occasion or holiday - use blue or pink fingerprints for a new baby card, yellow for Easter, green for St Patrick's day, red/white/blue for July 4th. The possibilities are endless. We will definitely be doing it again!

Iz's Christmas tree footprints

Being only 4 months, Iz isn't really into arts and crafts like D so I had to help a fair bit ;)

First I painted her feet with glittery green paint and them put two footprints close together on some orange card. This was quite fiddly to do on my own so no photos I'm afraid! But here is what they looked like afterwards:

Drying on top of the fish tank...

Once they were dry I added a yellow star, tree trunk and coloured stickers as baubles. I experimented with random baubles or a string of baubles - which do you prefer? We decided randomness looked better.

The finished cards :)

Random baubles rather than chains won our vote!

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I'm really happy with how they both turned out and as with all the cards we ever make I always make sure we do an extra one so we can keep one too :)

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Have you made any homemade cards this year? I'd love to hear any other ideas or leave a link in the comments if you've blogged about it too.