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Don’t have a lot of time to spend on Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the online world is a great source of free images that can be used to create quick and easy holiday craft projects. As an example, crafts made from vintage Christmas cards or vintage holiday clip art found online are simple to make, 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 a terrific bonus, because you don’t have to worry about using other people’s art illegally.

Just a quick Web search with the search term “vintage Christmas” will give you a huge selection of free vintage images from which many fun crafts projects can be made. And, of course, if you don’t like vintage, new Christmas clip art can also be used to produce beautiful projects.

Here are examples of three projects nearly anyone can make by using free art found online:

Christmas Gift Tags
There are actually free Christmas gift tags available for download from the Internet but you can also make your own. Simply download the the image or images you like and insert them into a table in your word processing or other type of program. The table should have two columns and six or eight rows, depending on how long and thin you want the gift 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 Holiday Greeting Cards
When you’ve downloaded the holiday image you’d like to use, paste it into a word processing or PowerPoint 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 apply just a little glitter glue to make it sparkle. You might also want to make your own envelopes or buy card and envelope sets at the dollar store and then recycle the cards.

Family Love Holiday Wreath
Making a Christmas wreath is simple and can even be made when your family gets together for Christmas dinner. Here are the supplies you’ll need to have on-hand:

• 1 plain Styrofoam wreath ring (you choose the 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 two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
• Scissors
• Straight pins

Ask everyone to write Christmas messages and the date on the holly-shaped paper leaves. Then, stick them to the Styrofoam wreath with the straight pins. Be prepared to adjust the positioning of the leaves a bit to get them to look balanced. The straight pins will make it easy to reposition the elements. (Just make sure small children don’t get their hands on the pins!) When the leaves are all in position on the wreath, pin clip art among the leaves. The resulting wreath will be a treasure that commemorates your family’s love every holiday season for a long time to come.

I hope you have a great time making these holiday craft projects and that you have a joyful holiday!