Tips for Painting Your Own Christmas Cards

Christmas is coming up soon so it is time to start thinking about what to do for Christmas cards. While there are beautiful cards available everywhere around Christmas, a fun and creative alternate to buying cards would be to send out personalized Christmas cards by painting your own. This is a great activity that is cheap and easy that you can work on as a family. I want to present to you some ideas about painting your own Christmas cards.

Types of Paint and What Paper to Use

Watercolor
I have seen some amazing paintings that were done in watercolor. Maybe you are a very skilled artist or maybe your child just happens to have a set of watercolors already that they love. If you want to create your Christmas cards and paint them with watercolor, you will need to use watercolor paper to create your card. This paper soaks up a lot of water that other papers would not be able to handle. Watercolor sets sometimes come with their own paint brushes. If not, there are paintbrushes available at any art supply store that are created specifically for watercolor. If you are having your child do the painting, buy a children's watercolor set, but if you will be doing a lot of the painting, you should splurge on the real set because the colors will be bolder.

Acrylic
I know a lot of people who do not use acrylic paint because they feel that it is inferior to other types. Personally acrylic paint is my favorite because it is cheap (I usually buy mine from Wal-Mart costing anywhere from 50 cents to $1.50), easy to use, and available in a wide variety of colors. If you are going to use acrylic paint, you should try to find cardstock as your paper to keep it from curling once painted. When I paint with acrylic paint, I usually only have two brushes that I use. One is a flat, medium sized brush in case there is a large surface area that I will need to fill in and the other is a smaller round brush to help with details. I like to only use a couple of brushes so I don't make a huge mess. If you are going to use acrylics, you should also try to find a set of cheap plastic paint palates to pour your paint on (it will also be helpful if you want to blend colors, but I have been known to use an old pizza box instead of a palate).

Finger-Paint
This is the messiest paint that you could choose for your Christmas cards, but it could also be the most fun. If you child will be doing most of the painting, they would probably enjoy the finger-paint more than they would enjoy watercolor or acrylic. There is specific finger-painting paper available, but you could also use cardstock or even construction paper with this paint. Another added bonus is that you will not need any paint brushes, but you will need to have newspapers spread out and be prepared to make a huge mess.

Color Schemes
Of course there are always the Christmas classic colors of green and red, but there are other color combinations that you could use as well. Blue and brown could be used together, red and brown, green and brown, brown and gold, red and light blue, and light blue and silver are some ideas of other great color combinations that would work well on Christmas cards.

Stencils and Extras
Stencils and stamps are a great way to get an outline on the card of what you would want your design to look like. There are great Christmas stencils available that you could use to mix and match. Maybe let your child paint the background of the card, then you could stencil on a silhouette of a reindeer or some holly. You can also find great stamps for holiday messages that you could use on the inside of the card. Now I know that this may sound tacky to some of you, but I know that I'm not the only one who is in love with glitter. It's Christmas and people expect sparkles so go ahead, indulge, and use them on your homemade Christmas card.

Christmas is a holiday where you should spend as much time as possible with your family. Creating your own homemade Christmas cards will allow you to share time with your family, have fun, be creative, laugh, love, forget about stress, and create something unique to send out for your friends and family to be displayed in their homes for the next month or so.