Making all my Christmas cards by hand this year instead of just buying them, has really put me into a crafty sort of spirit even now that Christmas is over. It creates a lot of clutter on the kitchen table, but I love having all my papers, scissors, inks, tapes, stickers and so on spread out around me while I decide on what touch to put on a project next.

While I do plan on making more cards because it’s always nice to have them on hand, I stumbled across a different crafty thing to make…

Smash books. First, an intro.

I came across the idea by accident, but I loved it. I’ve been calling it punk or messy scrapbooking. Scrapbooking for the rest of us, you might say. I was tempted to buy the book and products featured on the video, but I found many more instructional videos on how to make your own. I decided that I would try out making my own and then decide if I wanted the ‘brand name’ stuff.

Using blank greeting cards torn in half (because it was the most decent and sturdy cardstock I had on hand for the covers), I set out making two different ones. I’m going to stick all the pics behind a ‘more’ tag, though, so people don’t have to wait for the page to load if they don’t want to.

more »

Now that everyone has received their Christmas cards, I can finally put the pictures up! I’ve been feeling quite crafty this month, starting with making all these Christmas cards… I quite like making cards and am thinking of starting a stock of birthday, thinking of you, etc cards that I can just pull out when needed.

On with the cards! You can click on them to make them a bit bigger. This is the first time I’ve used the ‘gallery’ function, so let me know if you don’t like it.