‘Tis the season for giving, so I’m giving away these Gift Card Holder SVG designs for free! It’s also the season to be crafty – and your Cricut, Cameo or Scan-n-Cut machines are perfect for some holiday creativity!

I suggest heavy weight paper of 65 lb or more for this project. (Check your printer settings for the heaviest weight it will accept). If you prefer not to have the ribbon holes, simply ungroup the design and delete them before your cut. I also added an extra square cut on the unused portion of my sheet and glued the pattern behind the window cut. And, if you want to add ribbon, as seen in the photo it will hold ribbon up to a half inch in width.

This download includes the reindeer, snowflake and Christmas tree Gift Card Holder SVG designs. In addition, each one fits on an 8.5 x 11 sheet so you can use the print and cut feature to print messages on the inside or outside of the card if you want to personalize them. Your friends and family will love receiving a little cash or a gift card to their favorite place in these cute holders with your personal stamp of love on each one. Happy Holidays and happy cutting!! (Have a project in mind? Send me an email at lisaslifetips@gmail.com and I will choose one project each month to design and give away to all my readers, including you!)

Looking for inspiration for Christmas Treats this year? This Cajun Christmas Cracker Recipe is DELISH and, it also comes with a free SVG for labels!

How I DIY’ed My Destination Beach Wedding (Series)

One of the most important aspects of your wedding is the invitation. It sets the tone and style for the wedding. And it can also be one of the most expensive aspects of the wedding.

After researching many different variations of wedding invitations, I decided the tri-fold, pocket invitation style would work best for our destination wedding. Like most destination weddings, this was going to be a four-day affair and I needed the extra space in the invitation to include lots of details about the weekend.

During my online searching, Pinterest pinning and Etsy browsing, I quickly realized that I could save a ton of money by doing these myself! My best friend had a Silhouette Cameo and gave me an overview of how it works. I was so impressed, I decided to buy one for myself, and began the process of learning how to use the cutting machine and software. I ended up purchasing this one and I had the best time going to Hobby Lobby and Michael’s to pick out the paper I was going to use, learning the software and pouring through designs online until I found one I liked the most. If you’re new to designing invitations, as I was, some great resources were FontBundles.net, TheHungryJPEG.com and DesignBundles.net. They have freebies that are given out each week and I didn’t have to pay a dime for the fonts I used in my invitations or save-the-dates. And there are some great designs for inspiration too!

I then spent HOURS creating the perfect cutting design for my invitation. I searched online and just couldn’t find one that suited what I was looking for, so I created my own. I enjoyed the process and didn’t get too frustrated creating it (ok, maybe just a little) but it was well worth the time and effort to get to the end result. I do understand that most people will not want to create their own file from scratch and I do sell the digital files I created, for a discount here. I also sell them on Etsy at this link. One word of caution – doing your own invitations does take time! However, it is so rewarding to see your design come to life and to have the memory of doing it yourself, not to mention the money you’ll save! Here’s a YouTube video of me cutting the file for the wedding invitation jacket:

The inserts and invitation you see in the photo at the top of this page started out as blank rectangle cuts that I then designed and did a print and cut. Those files can be purchased at my Etsy shop as well. If you’d like me to do a video on how I did that, please comment below. Next week….the Save the Dates..