Don’t have a lot of time to spend on Christmas crafts? Not to worry, because the World Wide Web is full of free images that can be used to create quick and easy Christmas craft projects. For example, crafts made from vintage Christmas greeting cards or vintage Christmas clipart 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).

Just a quick Internet search using the search term “vintage holiday” will give you a large number of free vintage images from which many craft projects can be made. And if you’re not a fan of vintage, contemporary Christmas clip art can also be used to produce beautiful 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 can also make your own. Simply download the the image or images you like and paste them into a table in your word processing 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 them out using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. If you’d like to attach the cards to gifts with strings, use a hole punch in the corners of the cards.

Handmade Christmas Greeting Cards
Once you’ve gone online and downloaded the Christmas image you would like to use, paste it into a word processing or PowerPoint document. You can size the card by adjusting the software’s settings. Place the image on one half of the card, so it can be folded in half after 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 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
  • Free Christmas images or vintage cards of your choice (between two and four inches long), printed and cut along the outlines
  • Scissors
  • A box of short straight pins

Have family members and guests jot Christmas messages and the date on the holly leaves. Then, stick them to the Styrofoam wreath 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 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 enjoy making these simple and fun holiday crafts and that you have a terrific Christmas!