Making Christmas cards from scratch is one of the best ways to show the holiday spirit. They take time, energy, care, and show the people whom you may not spend a lot of time with throughout the year that you are thinking of them, wishing them well and that they are important to you.

There are a few things that you need when it comes to card making. If you are new to scrapbooking or card making then the best way to go is to look at supply kits. These include everything that you need in order to make the cards that you want. Some of these even include instructions on how to make various types of designs.

While making everything from scratch is great, it does require an extensive amount of equipment or a very good pair of scissors and a good ruler. The best is to get simply blank cards that have been precut, then simply do whatever type of designs that you wish to have on the cards and sayings. You can either write this yourself or get pre made statements.

For the sake of easy card, making you will need the following materials

* Pre cut card stock and envelopes - This takes the guesswork out of cutting and making sure that everything fits.

* Stickers - These are a great way to take care of a lot of the work that goes into card making, everything from the sayings to the colorful borders and designs can be done with stickers.

* Stamps and Ink - Stamps are great ways to place a variety of different designs on your cards. They can also be used as outlines for coloring.

* Pen - These can gel pens, they work the best, or regular ball pens. Gel pens work the best because they usually do not leave impressions in the cards

* Photo tape - This is small sized double-sided tape, that can be used to adhere photos, or even smaller designs in paper

* Glitter - it is usually best to get the glue type or gel type rather than loose. It makes less of a mess.

These are just the basic supplies. More advanced crafters may want to include a variety of different mediums including ribbons, raised stickers or designs or paper cutting.

The first step is to lay out everything that you want to do and place it where you want on the card in order to get an idea of where everything will go and how it will look when it is done.

It is best to do the outside of the card first in order to allow it to dry before doing the inside if you are adding anything other than writing to the inside.

Once you have allowed the outside to dry and you have added to the inside anything that you wish to add it is time to add whatever messages you would like to add. These messages can be done with stickers that have pre- written messages on if you want to do a signature or you can use the Gel pen to write out a message. Address the envelope before placing the card in side then after making sure that everything on the card is dry simply slide it in and you are all set to send out home made Christmas cards.