Easy handmade Christmas stocking cards and gift tags

Christmas cards - christmas stocking design

I can’t believe it’s already 2016, the last few months just seemed to fly by. I hope all of your end of year celebrations were fun and joyous ^_^.

Keeping up with tradition of the past few years I once again made all of my Christmas cards, this time creating Christmas stockings using just paper and gift wrapping. Below is a step by step guide on how I made them along with their gift tag counterparts.

Christmas Cards

To begin with, I traced these guide s I made onto my preferred type of craft paper. You could also just print them out and glue the sheet down as an easier alternative.

It should be noted that the stocking itself is more like a pocket with a separate piece of card sitting inside of it. If you like to write a lot in your cards its probably worth printing the guide out at a larger size so you’ll have more room to write your message.

Christmas stocking card - outline on paper

Cut out the two smaller bits that are the trim and put them aside. Roughly cut around the stocking shape, making sure to leave some space around the outlines.

Christmas stocking card - cut out small trim section

Flip the stocking shape over to the back. Cut out a section of wrapping paper of your choice, making sure you have enough to cover the entire stocking shape and then glue it on. Once in place, put it under something heavy and flat (I used a stack of magazines) and leave it to dry.

NOTE: If you’re using wrapping paper with a pattern that only has one right way up (e.g a pattern of Christmas trees that all face the same way) make sure you stick down the paper facing upright on the stocking side with the “wings”. The pattern will appear upside down on one side so make sure it’s the back side!

Christmas stocking card - flip stocking shape over to the back side — Flip the stocking shape over to the back side (outline side down)

Christmas stocking card - glue the wrapping paper onto the back of the stocking shape. — Glue your wrapping paper onto the stocking and put it under something heavy to dry flat.

Once the card is dry, cut out the stocking along the outlines. Don’t forget the small gap on the bottom of the stocking as well.

Christmas stocking card - cut out the stocking along the outlines

With that done, we can now fold it up so it starts to resemble a stocking. Fold the wings inwards and the bottom part of the stocking up to the top (see image below). Try to make both sides align as best as possible but if they don’t that’s okay, we can fix that later.

Christmas stocking card - fold the lines inwards — You can use a ruler to help fold the straight lines

Christmas stocking card - what it should look like folded up — What it should look like folded up. Don’t worry about the two sides not aligning perfectly, we will trim these later.

Now onto gluing this all together. Put glue on the outside of the wings and then along the edges of the bottom half of the stocking. Then fold it up again as you did before and place it under your trusty flat, heavy object to make sure it drys properly.

Christmas stocking card - glue the sides together — Outlines of where to apply glue. You can also do this on the bottom half of the stocking as well.

Once dry, gently open up the ‘pocket’ to make sure it hasn’t accidentally stuck together. If all is well next is cleaning up those edges. Very carefully trim off any overhanging sides and also round off the edges from the joins at the bottom of the the two stocking halves.

Christmas stocking card - trim edge to more neat

The final part is now putting on the trims. Simply put glue on the top edges of both sides of the stocking as well as the side edges of the trims and stick them on. Put the card back under your flat, heavy object again and wait for it to dry.

Christmas stocking card - gluing on the trims — Pinch the trim edges together to make sure they stick properly

Once dry the stocking card is pretty much done! All that remains is to create a message card to pop inside. If you plan on using nice paper for your card, I suggest cutting out sizes on some plain paper first and test putting them in the stocking to ensure they fit correctly. Then you can use that as a template for your nicer paper. I also added some red and white twine to my message card as a little draw string to help pull the message card out.

Christmas stocking card - final card with message card inside — Final card with message card hidden inside

Christmas stocking card - little message card outside the stocking — Little card outside the stocking

I found these cards really easy and relatively quick to make (sans glue drying time) compared to many of my other creations. What I like about them is that you could easily mix them up with added decorations and different materials. On a few of mine I added a snowflake cut out to the front as a little variation but the possibilities are endless.

Gift Tags

Along with the cards I always create a smaller version as well to use as gift tags for my presents. For this I simplified the card down to just a one-sided stocking with a single trim. I once again traced the outlines again onto card, this time drawing multiples on the same piece of paper. The benefit of doing this was being able to just glue one large single piece of wrapping paper onto the back.