Believe It Or Not: A Summer Activity For Kids that Make Great Christmas Gifts!
I remember when my children were young and our summer vacations had quickly come and gone… but the summer wasn’t over yet! It didn’t take long for the excitement of the kids being out of school to wear-off and their summer boredom set in! One way I would help my children’s summer days filled with boredom, and relieve some of my stress, was provide some fun activities to keep the kids busy!
A creative way to keep your kids busy too, is to offer craft activities or projects that not only serve the purpose of keeping them entertained now, during the summer, but can be used as gifts later in the year. Like Christmas. I know, I know… Christmas is the absolutely last thing on your mind. You might have thought of flying blue monkeys with bat wings before the thought of Christmas entered your brain, but doing yourself a favor now, and keeping the kids busy with something they can also enjoy again around the holidays is actually a pretty clever idea! How often are you super-busy shopping, cooking, and spreading holiday joy in a million other Christmas activities each winter? Wouldn’t it be nice to help yourself out now and make the holidays easier on yourself later? It’s a a win-win situation as summer becomes less stressful and can get a little bit boring, while the month of December usually is the complete opposite of stress-free!
One idea for “Summer Activities that turn into Christmas Gifts”is to make snow globe gift with your Digital Scrapbooking Pages!
It is easy to make a digital scrapbooking page for the center of your snow globe, all you need to do is gather some special digital photos, and holiday digital scrapbooking supplies, and use your graphic program like Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to make a digital scrapbooking page for the snow globe.
Use a Christmas Digital Scrapbooking Kit to make the digital scrap page. For example, the Christmas Elegance Kitis a digital scrapbooking kit rich with holiday-decadence! The Christmas Digital Scrapbooking Kit is filled with soft and smooth-looking, velvety digital papers, ribbons, bows, and Quick Pages; as well as gold-dipped tags, Word Art, and digital frames! This luxurious digital scrapbooking kit includes the perfect supplies to celebrate all of the elegance that goes along with such a special winter holiday!
The great thing about using a digital scrapbooking kit like this is that you can either use the scrapbooking papers and supplies to design your own special creation or it also comes with Quick Pages for fast digital scrapbooking where you only have to add your photos and you are good to go!
If you really aren’t sure to how to get your children doing this part of the task you might check these blog articles that talk about digital scrapbooking with children:
Blog Article 1: Helping Kids Start Digital Scrapbooking ~ Part 1
Blog Article 2: Helping Kids Start Digital Scrapbooking ~ Part 2
Blog Article 3: Help Teens Find a Passion: Try Digital Scrapbooking and Photo Editing
Next, resize the finished digital scrapbooking page so that you can print a mini-version out on your printer and place inside the snow globe as the centerpiece. This is what really will make your snow globe special: it has personal family photos and designs that you can’t find with a regular, store-bought snow globe! Plus, this type of gift is simple for children make, which is a great way to keep kids busy.
You can make as many digital scrapbooking pages as you want, but you might want to at least make two, one for the front side and one for the back side of the snow globe!
In this example I used the digital scrapbooking supplies from the kit above to make one of the digital scrapbooking pages, and then I took one of the Quick Pages from the kit added my photos and made the other digital scrapbooking page!
Check at your local craft store for snow globe kits or build your own snow globe. I found a great snow globe kit through Oriental Trading that sells a special snow globe that you can insert your own paper into. It is call Design your Own Snow Globes and you can get 6 of them for about $14.95!
Just make sure to measure there inserts and print your page at the same size. Place your digital scrapbooking page in the insert area, and follow the directions to complete the snow globe!
If you are making your own snow globe from scratch, like with canning jars, then you will have to make sure the digital scrapbooking page is laminated and protected from the water. Some craft shops provide this service if you don’t have a laminating machine. Also, a self laminating paper from an office supply store might also work. On these later ideas, it might be good to do a test-run to see if your scrap page holds up in liquid before finishing all the globes. Here is info on making your own snow globe, though in their example they used a figurine instead of a digital scrapbooking page. It is nice, but it’s the same old-theme. Perhaps combine the two ideas, for a really special, personalized snow globe: add a figurine with a digitally scrapped background!
Once you have finished making your snow globe, take a few minutes to enjoy them, then hide them until Christmas! Bring them out around the holidays, give them as gifts, and make your snow globe new and exciting once again!
Making a snow globe with your kids will take some time, from creating scrap pages together, printing, and constructing a home-made snow globe. It’s a fun-filled activity that’s sure to keep your kids busy and having fun! Try some activities like this to keep your kids busy this summer… who knows, it might also save you some time this Christmas season when an unexpected child or guest arrives and you need a present!
Today’s tip was only one idea for the many Digital Scrapbooking Summer Activities we have planned! Make sure to keep checking back for new summer tips!
Happy Scrapping and Happy Summer,
Cheri
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Do you have any good ideas to keep digital scrapbooking pages water-proof? If so please share your information with us and our other blog readers!
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