Discovering Papercutting at Christmas

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Can you believe it is December on Sunday??! My kiddos are very excited {esp as it means they can finally start opening their advent calendars!}. I’ve just been putting the finishing touches to our activity advent calendar for this year – I love having something fun and crafty to do each day!

One thing that we are adding into our list of usual Christmas crafts this year is some paper cutting. It’s been on my ‘to-try’ list for a long time, and while it might be a bit tricky for my four year old, I think the girls will really enjoy it.

I’m planning on putting a very personal spin on our cards and gift tag and creating some fantastic papercut designs. The possibilities are endless, we’re going to use our favorite holiday colour combinations, and some fun shapes to create one-of-a-kind DIY Christmas cards and tags. It’s a great way to keep the kiddos busy crafting AND save buying cards too!

I’ve always been a bit intimidated by paper cutting, it looks so complicated, and I always fear that I won’t have the patience or a steady enough hand! Thankfully, we have found some fantastic templates online at Design Bundles which make is much more straightforward.  They have some gorgeous Winter/Christmas Templates that will be simply perfect. So many that I cannot actually pick a favourite! I love, love this snowman, who would make a perfect card topper – though I also think you could create a wonderful piece of framed art with these, that would make fantastic gifts for the kiddos to give to their grandparents at Christmas.

We’ll be paper cutting by hand, so we’ve invested in a couple of decent cutting mats and some new craft knives – and are going to start with some simple designs to begin with, I’m thinking some snowflakes shapes on a rectangle of card to create a simple but effective gift tag. I’m also looking ath these svg cuts that Design Bundles offer. They have an amazing Christmas Bundle with over 50 files ready for you to create cards, t-shirts…. anything you can think of! My kids will absolutely love these, and I think they will have so much fun designing with them.

If you are looking for ideas for some great activities you can do with paper cutting, here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• Make simple gift tags, cut snowflakes out of a rectangle of card, and glue a contrasting colour card behind to make them stand out.
• Create your own Christmas Cards
• Make fancy paper snowflake to decorate your home
• Create a unique piece of art to frame and gift to your loved ones
• Make some beautiful pieces of wall art to decorate this festive season
• Make paper cut winter houses, pop a led candle inside and decorate your mantle.

There are so many possibilities, and paper cutting looks so much fun! I cannot wait to dive in – would love to see any creations you have made from paper cutting {and hear any advice you may have!}