by a Guest Author
The Internet is full of free St. Patrick’s Day images that can be used to make easy craft projects. A good example of these are vintage St Patrick’s Day cards that can be found online. They make a variety of craft projects quite simple, because vintage images are so effective when it comes to conveying a St. Patrick’s Day theme. They automatically give your handmade cards, decoupaged items, steam punk projects and other creative endeavors a certain flair that modern images often don’t impart. Another big bonus to using vintage cards is that they can usually be incorporated into projects without copyright issues, because their age predates copyright protection.
That’s not to say that modern St. Patrick’s Day images aren’t versatile too. It’s just that, for some reason, many of them are of lower quality than vintage images. Still, there are some good ones to be found on the Internet. Just do a Google search for “St. Patrick’s Day clip art” and you’ll see what I mean.
Here are just two examples of fun craft projects that virtually anyone can make by using free St. Patrick’s Day images found online:
St. Patrick’s Day Place Cards
If you’re going to have guests over for a traditional Irish dinner of corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, you can make your table look more festive by creating your these simple table place cards. They’re a great way to make your guests feel welcome and can be made quite easily using either free clip art images or vintage cards. Just download the the image or images you like and paste them into a table in word processing software, such as Microsoft Word or Open Office. Make the table two columns wide by six or eight rows high, depending on how big you want the place cards to be. Paste the St. Patrick’s Day art into alternating table cells, making sure there’s enough room to write one guest’s name on each card. Then, print the page onto white or colored card stock, and cut the place cards using a paper cutter or a ruler and craft knife. Once they’re cut, just fold them in half. If you make these, your St. Patrick’s Day table-scape will be automatically be more beautiful.
Handmade St. Patrick’s Day Cards
These are similar to the place cards, only obviously much larger. Once you’ve found the St. Patrick’s Day art you like on the Internet and have downloaded it, paste it into either publishing (Microsoft Publisher, Quark or similar) or document (Microsoft Word or similar) software. Once in place, you can make the card the dimensions you want by sizing the image. Just make sure the graphic is sized to stay on the front half of the card, so it can be folded after it’s printed and you won’t lose any part of the image. Then you can print the card on sturdy paper or card stock and fold it. If you’d like, you can spread a little glitter glue on it to make it sparkle — but don’t use too much! Not only will too much glitter make the card look tacky; it may also cause it to warp.
(St. Patricks Day, for link to Table of Contents)