Find Out About Friday - Top 3 Tips for Mass Producing Your Christmas Cards

As December looms ever closer for many of us it is time to ramp up our Christmas Card production.  For this week's Find Out About Friday I am going to share my top 3 tips for mass producing Christmas Cards.

1. Keep your design simple - this does not mean that it cannot be high impact, but keep the number of things you are going to do on each card as low as possible.  For example make use of punches to reduce the amount of cutting out you are going to do, or if you are using clear mount stamps and stamping two stamps in the same colour mount them on one block so you only need to ink and stamp once.  Also remember that you are going to be posting a number of these cards so you will not want to make sure they are flat enough not to cost extra to post!
2. Work in a production line style - complete one step on each of the cards, then the next etc rather than completing one card and starting again.  For example cut all your bases, then cut all your layers, then stamp all your images, then layer everything together etc - It will be quicker.  I tend to work in batches of at least 10-12 at a time.   I pick my batch size to make sure it is a multiple of the number of things I get from each sheet, so if I had four layers from each sheet and then five image layers per sheet I would make batches of 20. That way you won't get bored and you will minimise your wastage.
3. Make it fun!  That is why we are doing it after all.  Why not involve the family, give them specific jobs on each of the cards.  Alternatively why not make an event of it, get together with friends and all do your cards together - chocolate and coffee can help too.  Get the Christmas Music going to get you all in the mood and before you know it you will all have loads of cards and will have had a real giggle together too

This card illustrates all these tips - the design is simple and easy to replicate, and it can be very efficiently cut from card (the vanilla layer is 7cm wide so you get exactly 6 from a sheet of A4), it is easy to batch produce and flat enough to post.

If you are looking for a simple kit to make up with your friends check out these kits - lots of the work has already been done for you!

Happy Stampin'