holiday card booklets

If your like me you love getting holiday cards in the mail. I have been stumped with what to do with th though after the holiday passes. In past years I've just packed them up with the rest of my holiday gear. Some of them are really beautiful and are from  close friends and family with personal messages others are nice but I sadly can't read the signature or recall who gave them to me. So a way to honor both types I decided to make books out of them, kind of like here, which I saw on pinterest, but of course I added my own Perki flair.

Here's what you'll need:
Sicssors
A variety of Card stock and scrapbook paper
Markers
Glue stick
Hole punch
Binder rings
Ribbon, stickers and other embellishments

Step1: Making the cover. This cover is holiday turned but you could do one for just about any type of cards you have. I plan on making a birthday and wedding one next. This is also great for showers since you can punch the cards right then if you make the cover in advance. Measure where the holes will be and use the cover as a guide for the others cards. You can punch 2 holes using a standard 3-hole punchers otherwise if you have a single hole punch or adjustable 3- hole punch make sure to have enough binder rings.

Step 2--making the pages. With some cards they are large enough to be punched as they are but other are smaller or have a message in them you don't want to cut through.with those cases I mounted the card on cardstock with and punched the holes in that.

Step 3: Embellish! This is the fun part because you decorate around the cards on cardstock. I even cut  cards up and made a collage with different pieces. Use metallic pens, paper punches, ribbon and stickers to dress up each card page.

Step 4: Put it all together.
Put the cards in order by year, date, honor, theme or however it looks pretty. Hole punch each page and use the binder rings to hold it all together.

Now instead of throwing out holiday cards, you have neat decorative coffee table books of your past memories for every season or occasion. The best part is that you can keep adding to them once you get going, so Perki!

Kiss kiss!
Natrina, The Perki Giver