There are so many fantastic digital card designs available these days that make creating beautiful custom holiday cards with your favorite family photos an absolute breeze, but sometimes I miss that handmade element too… especially when it comes to holiday cards.

I was thinking about this recently for pretty obvious reasons (Um…how is it already November 18th?!), and it suddenly occurred to me that it really doesn’t have to be one way or the other… If you want to send holiday cards with a homemade touch but don’t have a gazillion hours to spare to make them all from scratch, why not just start with a fabulous digital design that you love, then add some simple craft embellishments to bridge the gap between “custom printed” and “custom made”!

Here are a few SUPER EASY ideas of what you can do, mocked up using some of the printed Holiday Card samples I received from Tiny Prints this year. It only took a few minutes to embellish all of these designs, but I was still instantly reminded of how therapeutic the most “simple crafting” can be once in a while… especially when you’ve got a good chick flick or holiday movie that you’ve already seen playing in the background, and you can just kind of zone out and enjoy the blissful simplicity of craft rhinestones, ribbon, glitter and glue. :)

Fine craft glitter was one of the first things I wanted to try out. Just use a fine-tipped paint brush and clear glue to cover a few key areas on your card that could use a little extra sparkle. In the samples directly above, I added irridescent white glitter to a few of the snowflakes in the upper right-hand corner of the snowy design (It’s a little harder to spot in the photo but super sparkly in person!)… and in the photo below that, a little red glitter on just one of the background flowers added plenty of extra holiday “spark” to this design.

Another easy embellishment: ric-rac ribbon (or really any ribbon for that matter). I love how this particular design looks with the addition of a bright pop of red…

…and sparkly silver trim adds a festive touch to this next design – especially when paired with a few small red rhinestones:

Here are a couple more examples of simple rhinestone-embellished cards…

And of course we can’t forget a shout-out to the crafty tools that make these pretty, “semi-handmade” holiday cards possible!

Happy crafting! :)

RESOURCES:

• Craft Tools: Michaels
• Digital Cards: Tiny Prints Holiday Cards and Christmas Cards collections