Too busy to spend a lot of time on Christmas crafts with your family? Well, you’re in luck, because the Internet is full of free images that can be used to make easy Christmas craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage Christmas cards or vintage Christmas images found online make projects simple, due to the fact that vintage images are versatile and also quite effective when it comes to delivering a holiday message. Because of their age, vintage images can also be downloaded and used without fear of copyright infringement. That’s important for people who want to honor copyrights (as we all should).

Doing a fast Internet search for “vintage Christmas” will give you a large number of free vintage images from which a lot of craft projects can be made. And, of course, if you don’t like vintage, new Christmas clip art can also produce great craft projects.

Here are some examples of simple Christmas projects virtually anyone can make by using free electronic images:

Holiday Gift Tags
You can actually find free holiday gift tags on the Internet but you might find it more fun to make your own. Simply download the the image or images you like and paste them into a table in your word processing program. Make the table two columns by six or eight rows, depending on how tall you want the cards to be. Place your chosen art into every cell (or every other cell if you want to fold them), leaving room to write people’s names. Then, print onto heavy card stock, cut the place cards using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. You can also make holes for string or ribbon in the corners by using a hole punch.

Handmade Christmas Greeting Cards
When you’ve downloaded the holiday image you’d like to use, paste it into a Word, PowerPoint or OneNote document. You can make the card virtually whatever size you want using the software’s settings. Position the image on one half of the card, so it can be folded in half once it’s printed. Print the card on sturdy stock, fold it and use a little glitter glue to make it sparkle. You can also make your own envelopes or just get some at the dollar store.

Family Love Christmas Wreath
Making a Christmas wreath is easy and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you’ll need:

• 1 plain Styrofoam wreath ring (your choice as far as size)
• Green construction paper, cut in the shape of holly leaves approximately four inches long
• Christmas clip art or vintage cards of your choice (between 2 and 4 inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
• Scissors
• A box of short straight pins

Have family members and guests write Christmas messages and the date on the holly leaves. Then, position them in a balanced way around the Styrofoam wreath and affix them with the straight pins. You might need to adjust the leaves to look good. The straight pins will make it easy to reposition the elements. (Just make sure to watch the little ones around the pins!) When the leaves are all in position on the wreath, add the clip art. The result will be a custom wreath that reflects your family’s love every holiday season for a long time to come.

I hope you enjoy making these simple and fun holiday crafts and that you have a joyful holiday!