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Making your own Christmas cards is a great craft activity for all the family. Making your own Christmas cards means that you can personalise each one according to the recipient, and make extra special cards for those you really care for. The possibilities truly are endless when making your own cards, so gather up all the materials and get stuck in!

For a basic Christmas card you will need: rectangles of white card or stiff paper, envelopes that will hold the card when folded in half, pens, pencils or paint, and any embellishments of your choice plus glue. Take the card and lay it so that the longest sides are horizontal. Fold it neatly down the centre, by pulling one short edge to the other, and use a solid clean object such as a pen lid to press down firmly on the crease. These cards are ideal for children to make as they require very little use of scissors or small objects.

The front of the card is the surface facing you with the crease on the left-hand side. This is the part that you will be decorating. You can either draw a design on the front and colour it in using pens or paint, or you can cut out a picture from an old Christmas card from a previous year and glue that to the front. Add a greeting such as "Merry Christmas" which you can write freehand or add by using some rub-on or stick-on lettering, and the basic card is finished.

If you are feeling more adventurous, you can add some glitter to make the card sparkle. Lay out plenty of old newspaper on your work surface. Take a thin craft paintbrush and some PVA glue (the kind that is white when wet but dries clear) and carefully pick out some parts of the image that you have on the front of the card. If you have a picture of Santa, then perhaps the top or his hat, parts of his beard, and the tops of his boots could take a little glitter. Then while the glue is still wet, sprinkle glitter liberally over the areas where you have painted the glue. Tip the card up and tap it gentle to remove any excess glitter, and you will see the parts where the glue is now have glitter stuck on them also. Leave the card to dry completely before placing it inside the envelope.

For older children and perhaps adults, making a more sophisticated set of Christmas cards is a nice way to spend a weekend in late November. If you keep the designs simple, it is easy to make several cards in the same style. You may have seen hand-made cards in the shops and thought how easy they look to make; the secret is, using clean lines

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