Artline Monday - Christmas activities

I don't know about you but I find Christmas Day can feel like it goes on and on forever!  My children get up super early to open their presents and after that my husband and I are in the kitchen cooking up a storm while they play with all their lovely new things.  Once we have sat down and eaten our Christmas dinner there is a natural lull in the day, the adults are stuffed and often sleepy while the children are looking for something fun to do so I thought for today's post I would list a few activities they can do to pass some time over the holidays.

I think in most families there is always someone who buys stationery for children (in mine that's me!), get the kids to break open their new pens, paints and pencils and create some thank you cards, notes or drawings!  Here are a few ideas to get you started...

Make a card

Thank you cards

You can do the prep for this activity before Christmas, either buy a pack of plain cards from a craft shop or somewhere like Poundworld (that's where I got mine) or buy some card and cut and fold it into shape.  

The children can decorate the cards however they like, they could glue scraps of wrapping paper to the front, cut out pictures they like from Christmas cards or colouring books, they could draw or paint something or use some festive stamps like the Artline xclamations star stamp I used above.  Metallic pens like the Artline 900XF add a touch of sparkle and the white paint marker is great for drawing snow!

Design your own notepaper

Make your own notepaper

Again you can prepare for this beforehand, sort out some plain notepaper or plain A4 paper and fold it in half and cut it into two pieces.

The easiest way to decorate the notepaper is to create a boarder along all the edges.  Brush markers like the Artline Stixs are brilliant for drawing patterns and the Supreme metallic markers are fun too.  Washi tape and stamps are a really quick way to decorate the paper if you need to make a lot of sheets for your thank you notes.

Draw a picture

Thank you drawing

This one is really easy!  Get them to draw pictures as a thank you for their presents and then you can pop them into your thank you cards when you write them. 

Now, I said this one is easy but when I gave my six year old some paper and supplies she presented me with this lovely piece of modern art instead of a drawing.  I'm not one to stifle her creativity though and I'm sure one of her grandparents would like to pop this on their fridge so I just wrote thank you over the top of it using a metallic pen and praised her use of colour!

I hope you like my ideas and if you have any of your own please let me know!