Well, it was about that time of season when Christmas cards start coming in, but where do you put all those adorable picture cards everyone keeps handing you?! This Christmas Card Holder was an early December craft at our MOPS group.
The materials were fairly easy to find. First was the 1" x 6" boards (which ACTUALLY measures about .75 x 5.75", I don't know why it is labeled one dimension but actually measures another... but it does on just about everything when it comes to lumber). I think we bought 8 foot boards and chop sawed them in half. Next they were very lightly white washed with regular household wall paint, just watered down so that the white showed but also just lightened the wood for a near pickled look still revealing beautiful grain. A team member spray painted all the dollar store clothes pins (some red some white); I know you can buy them a color already but we saved money by painting them ourselves...but you could also leave them natural if you'd like. Another team member cut small strips of scrapbook paper for the tops of the clothes pins, which would be glued on with glue stick by the moms. A cute button would go on top of the scrapbook paper on the clothes pin since we had an abundance of buttons left over from other projects. The Cricut cut out the letters (offered in red, green or blue), holly leaves holly berries and a variety of snowflakes, all these were glue stick adhered. A 1.5-2" grosgrain ribbon (papermart.com) cut at 6-8" lengths became the hanging loop at the top. It was stapled onto the back of the board about half an inch from the top edge using a HEAVY DUTY stapler, some might say staple gun... the type you'd use to reupholster a chair with, not your desk stapler! But, just in case ladies did not want to hang this up but rather rest against a wall, we offered a little bit of black felt for the bottom back edge so that hardwood floors wouldn't get scratched by the edge; this was hot glued on.
Results...THIS WAS LOVED! It has huge success that they raved over. People made very nice looking projects, some ladies even turned it sideways and repositioned clothes pins. But it was very well received and many ladies went home to show where they put it or how they hung it up.
How to improve: I hot glued the clothes pins in place, which proved to be prone to being snapped and banged off by kids or transporting if not careful... solution would be (although labor intensive and pushed onto the prep person) to use that heavy duty staple gun, or if you're lucky to have access to a pneumatic/air compressor run staple gun, to staple on those pesky clothes pins into place and get those fastened on for good. Also, there are several options for those clothes pins: not painting them as already mentioned, painting them all white, but also WASHI tape is so readily available now in such cute patterns and seasonals, that would reduce mess or the time required for mod podge or glue stick to dry.
Again, this was a well talked about and highly regarded craft even before the improvements. So totally worth a try.
May God be with you as you lead others in crafting.
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