Laura Vegas

It's May and I'm here to share about Christmas cards. Go figure. I've been saving the Christmas cards we receive from family and friends for years, always with with the intention of finding a cool way to store/document them. I've seen several ways that intrigued me, but never one particular way that really, really spoke to me. 

I had to dig these two phone photos up from my external hard drive, so I can verify that I started my plan back in January of 2015. For years, I had simply shoved all of our cards into Ziploc bags and scribbled the year on the front with a pen. At some point, I came across some 6×12" envelope pages from Becky Higgins and I realized what a simple solution they would be to storing the cards. I simply slipped all of the Christmas cards from a single year into an envelope page and POOF, I was done. 

The envelope pages had a little pocket on the front for labeling. I believe they're about 3×4" in size. I created some 3×4" digital cards in Photoshop, using several different designs from Kerri Bradford Studio. I could probably tell you exactly what I used if you really wanted to know, but I made these well over a year ago, so it would take a little digging for me to figure that part out. 

Well, this past weekend, I was putting finished layouts away in albums, and I came across all of the completed envelopes. I know my intention was to add them into our family albums for each year, right along with the Christmas layouts. That was my plan all along. I guess I just never got around to that part. 

While that plan could still totally work, I realized that adding these into my albums would add quite a bit of bulk to albums that aren't really that bulky to begin with. That's when I came up with a new plan. I could put them all into a 6×12" album. A Christmas card album, you could call it. Since that's what it would be 😉 I am fairly certain that there are a few 6×12" albums out there, but for the life of me, I couldn't find them. I didn't spend too much time searching though, once I remembered that I have a large stash of 12×12" Modern albums from American Crafts. 

And being that these albums are chipboard, they're super easy to cut down to whatever size you need. Earlier this year, I had my mom cut one down to make a 9×12" album for my Project Life album (which I should really share soon). To figure out where to cut them, you just want to add in the page protectors (or for this project, the envelope pages), and mark with a ruler where you want to cut it. Make sure to give yourself an extra quarter to a half inch of wiggle room, and not cut directly to the edge of the protectors/envelopes.

As for how to cut them? Well, my mom has a table saw and they were done in about 10 seconds flat. So if you have access to a table saw, it's the perfect and easiest way to do it. You could also use a hand saw or even a knife of some sort. 

And there's my completed 6×12" album. I had my mom cut down two green albums, which hold seven years of cards already and still has plenty of room for at least 3-4 more years. At some point, I'll label the spines of the album, so that I know what they are on the shelf. But it felt really good to get this project done in about 15 minutes (had to drive a few blocks to my parent's house after all), and get all of those loose envelopes corralled and in a home.