Pinterest to the Rescue!

Some of you know how much I enjoy Christmas cards.  I won't get into the various reasons that I love them so much, but suffice it to say that they're one of my favorite parts about Christmas.  I've saved all of the Christmas cards that we've received since we got married.  Most of them live on display during the Christmas season and then get filed away in a plastic storage bin.  I have always wanted to do something more with my cards.  Most of the card projects out there involve cutting them up, which never really appealed to me.  When I came across this idea on Pinterest, I knew that I had my answer.

Source: allendesigns.typepad.com via Darren on Pinterest

The only things that you need for this are a three hole punch and one inch book rings (or two inch if you get a lot more Christmas cards that we do).  I already had a good three hole punch on hand from teaching.  I got my book rings at Office Depot.  They have them in with some of the other small desk supplies such as paper clips and push pins (or you can order them online).  I also used a few sheets of colored card stock.  The basic concept here is that you line up your cards, punch them, and put them together with the rings.  Here are a few of tips for including letters, punching small cards, photo cards, and what you might want to include.

Our Own Letter and Photo

I organized each of my books by year and included the letter and photo that we sent that year.  For this photo, I cropped out the bottom of the letter, which has all of our contact information.  Even though that was an old letter where literally the only thing still current was Jake's cell phone number, I figured better safe than sorry.  I pasted all of the regular photos into my books with scrapbook glue (I get it at Michael's).  You can punch your photos, too.

Photo Cards

I punched the photo cards that had writing on the back so the messages wouldn't get lost.  I pasted the photo cards that did not have writing on them.

Small Cards

Most years we got at least a couple smaller cards that could not be punched along the fold with two holes.  Instead I punched with one hole and lined up of these small cards together wherever I could.  If you only have one card, the most important thing is to make sure that it ends up somewhere in the middle.

Letters

If you paste the letters onto card stock like I did, make sure that you paste them so that you can open them again easily.  In some cases, I had to refold letters before gluing them.

Including Other Cards

Our anniversary is 4 days after Christmas so I always put up our anniversary cards with our Christmas cards and then saved them together.  I included them in our books.

Here's my 2010 book finished.  I chose a favorite, tall card for the front and pasted the year somewhere that didn't cover up the main picture.

I now have 2007-2010 completed.  I'll be honest: Most of my 2011 cards are still up on the side of the fridge or the china cabinet and will probably stay up most of the year.  I'll make our 2011 book during the Christmas season.

You can pull out your books for the Christmas season or leave a couple of them out all year round on your coffee table.  At this point, we only have the 4 so they don't take up that much room.  Down the line, it doesn't make sense to have a huge pile of them.  Eventually I'll probably just pull a few at random to put out.

I am so happy that I found this idea and was able to put it all together in less than a week.  I am also really happy that I took some time out to work on a project for myself.  I get so focused on creating things to sell that sometimes I lose sight of making things just for the sake of having them.  It's really important to find a balance.

What do you do with your old Christmas cards?  If you don't save them, when was the last time that you worked on a project for yourself?

I included this post in Michelle's Delicately Constructed Friday 2/24/2012 and Erika's It's a Wrap Link Party - 2/27/2012.