Reasons To Craft: Celebrate The Year
Every year has something to celebrate, from the birth of new family members to winning the championship basketball game. Not to mention all the holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and other big life moments. The joy of crafting is that you can make something special to celebrate the events and people in your life in creative ways all year round.
Handmade cards, gift tags, treat boxes, and invitations make recipients feel extra special. We love to connect with people through paper crafts, so we’re sharing inspiration for how you can celebrate in big and small ways throughout the year.
Essential Stampin’ Up! Products for Every Holiday
Does the idea of celebrating every holiday and life event with a handmade paper craft sound intimidating? Because that’s not the goal here. Sure, some in the Stampin’ Up! craft community have supplies and stamps for every holiday, but today, we’re talking about how to start building your craft supplies collection so you can maximize and multitask what you’ve got!
You just need a little creativity and a few basics to get started. If you are starting your crafting supplies collection from scratch, start with basic tools like scissors, glue, paper, ink, and a couple of stamps. We recommend the Winter Meadow Designer Series Paper, but don’t let the name fool you. This series has versatile patterns, textures, and colors that can be used throughout the year.
The Sending Love Stamp Set is perfect for Valentine’s Day, but so many crafts need a basic heart stamp, so this stamp set is adaptable to many seasons and celebrations.
To celebrate all the festivities of the winter months, we designed the Sparkling Snowflakes. Using different ink colors, innovative techniques, and your own creativity, you can start looking for reasons to paper craft throughout your year.
Unforgettable Holiday Paper Craft Ideas
The year is packed with official holidays that come around year after year, but there are also plenty of “unofficial” events that are worth your creative touch, too.
Winter Holidays You Want To Remember
When you think of “holiday,” a winter holiday like Christmas or Hanukkah is likely your first thought. Winter is packed with big events, so finding craft supplies that are versatile enough to be used on multiple projects might be a good idea.
That’s why we love the Merriest Trees Stamp Set. Of course, this set can be used to create a Christmas tree, but it can also be used to create a scrapbook page about a day of skiing with the family or a weekend at the cabin.
Use blue, white, and silver ink with this set to create a birthday card for a January birthday, or embellish the tree with cute forest animals to add to a gift tag for a little one in your life. Even though you might see the Merriest Trees Stamp Set and think Christmas right away, this one set, with a little creativity, can be used throughout the year.
Fun In The Sun: Celebrating Summer
Summer events and holidays are some of the most memorable: fireworks in the sky, graduations, weddings, lake days, and backyard BBQs (what says summer more than watermelon!?) Summer sees our social calendar a bit more packed, which creates opportunities to create invitations, party favors, decorations like bunting and garlands, and thank you notes.
Summer is also vacation season! Give those photos and memories a long-term home by creating scrapbook pages to capture and preserve those stories.
Letting loose creatively can be easy when you have the right crafting supplies.
Combining two stamp sets, the Gone Fishing Stamp Set and Flower Cart Stamp Set, you can create dozens of different crafts to celebrate summer. Create a scrapbook page for Father’s Day with the Gone Fishing Stamp set, and then use those same stamps to craft a thank you card for the fisherman in your life.
Once In A Lifetime Events
Some events are special because of their infrequency, like births, graduations, weddings, and moving to a new home. All of these important days deserve to be remembered, and we have a few ideas for the perfect products to help you craft something special.
The Classic Wedding Stamp Set is festive and fun and can be customized for any wedding—big, small, formal, or casual—and can be used for a congratulations card, shower invitation or card, or even a scrapbook page commemorating the day.
The Delightful Wishes Stamp Set is perfect for sending love throughout the year. With the beautiful blend of fonts, you can pair the script “wishing” with messages of encouragement and celebration.
Adding a few more multipurpose stamp sets can round out your collection so you can create something customized for almost any recipient. Use the Flower Cart Stamp Set to commemorate Mother’s Day, and then use the flowers to decorate an invitation to a bridal shower.
Romanticize The Little Things
The Bee My Valentine Stamp Set is, in a word, darling. Everything from the sweet phrase, “You’re sweet as honey,” to the bee’s smiling face is perfect for celebrating the day of love. But this set has so much versatility, from the messages to the sweet bee smiles. Every crafter benefits from at least one heart stamp, and this set gives you a few to choose from. You can use this set for birthday cards, invitations, a sweet note “just because,” and scrapbook pages.
Because these adorable bees have been so popular, we have another stamp set, Meant to Bee, that includes the additional phrases, “love this life,” “cute as can bee,” and “we are meant to bee.”
Want to go even simpler? A quick stamp on the outside of a kid’s brown lunch sack with the messages from the Saying Hey Stamp Set will absolutely make their day!
Think Outside The Box With A Suite
Mixing and matching paper, ink, stamps, dies, and embellishments can be fun. But sometimes, you just need all of the components to blend together so you can get right to the fun part. That’s why we love using Suites when creating crafts to celebrate the year. Our Suites are curated to make it easy to create unique scrapbook designs, cards, invites, tags, and decor without having to wonder, “Does this go together?”
The coffee lover in your life will love the adorable die-cut cups and Adhesive-Backed Swirl Dots in the A Little Latte Suite, but its phrases like “Thanks so much” and “You’re the best part of my day” make it a great go-to collection for messages of gratitude and appreciation. Holidays are special, but we love looking for reasons to make people feel cherished every day.
Personalizing Your Holiday Celebrations
Stamps are, of course, a great way to add personalization to your project, but adding even more detail and a little more technical skill can amp up the creativity of your project. Take the Wood Textured Specialty Paper as an example. Most of the time, you’ll use your Blending Brush and brown or tan ink to create a wood look. But unlocking your creativity with just these two tools might bring personalized joy to your project.
Think rainbow tree bark for a unicorn-obsessed little girl’s birthday card or a gold embossed wood texture added to your holiday scrapbook page. Sometimes, all it takes to unleash your creativity is a specific person or event you want to celebrate, and you’ll be surprised how easy it is to find ways to incorporate personalized details into every project.
Celebrate Moments Big And Small
We all know that the years go by fast, and every year seems faster than the last. Taking the time to celebrate and capture all the moments, from the big achievements like graduation to the small memory of fishing with your family, will remind you of how important every year is. That’s why we work so hard to create unique designs, thoughtful messages, carefully chosen colors, and curated tools and embellishments.
Whether designing a Christmas card, sending an invitation to a baby shower, celebrating retirement, or capturing memories in your scrapbook, we have everything you need to make your project special.
Year-Round Scrapbooking Inspiration
When we celebrate the year, we all think of the big holidays, but let’s not forget the small moments either.
Does your family take an annual trip to the lake? That’s a tradition worth remembering and capturing in your scrapbook with the Gone Fishing Stamp Set or the Wood Textured Specialty Paper.
Maybe a loved one got married over the summer, and you want to remember that day using the same color palette as the wedding itself.
It could be a weekend full of beautiful autumn colors and the first pies of the season that was so sweet, it deserves its own page.
Even though those small moments are brief, they are sometimes the most important, and remembering them with a scrapbook page can help you feel connected long after the moment is over.
Get More Inspiration from Stampin’ Up!
Regardless of the celebrations you commemorate and create for, you might need inspiration and help, and there are many ways to get both! For inspiration, look to the Stampin’ Up! Community on Facebook, and check out our YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram for more tutorials and ideas. Reach out to your demonstrator and ask if they have ideas if you feel stumped. And of course, our catalogs have our newest products, perfect for so many occasions.