4 Holiday Card Designs That Are Easy to Mass Produce

The holidays are the busiest time of year for cardmakers—and the most fun. If you love sending handmade holiday cards but don’t love the time crunch, mass producing holiday cards is the sweet spot: you get the joy of creating, plus the efficiency of an assembly line. With a few smart shortcuts—stenciled backgrounds, paper-pieced panels, coordinating layering stencils, and die-cut batching—you can finish a stack of holiday cards quickly without sacrificing style.

Below are four easy holiday card designs from Karen, Jeannie, Charlene, and Jennifer. Each project was intentionally built for batching, using repeatable steps and products that will help you make more cards in less time without sacrificing style.

1. Stamp the Poinsettia Pattern background onto several A2 white cardstock panels using Intens-ified Black Ink. Stamp each panel twice for a crisp outline.
2. Clean the stamp, then repeat the stamping on additional A2 panels using Contour Ink for a soft, no-line look. Leave the stamp in place in the stamping platform when finished.
3. Place one stamped panel on a sticky mat. Line up stencil layer 1 from the Color Layering Poinsettia Pattern Stencils over the poinsettias and blend Cranberry Core Ink through the openings with a heavy hand. Repeat on all panels.
4. Line up stencil layer 2. Blend Cherry Core Ink over the poinsettias on some panels to create two tone petals. On other panels, use Peony Core Ink for a softer pink variation.
5. Position stencil layer 3 over the leaves and blend Fresh Lawn Core Ink over all the open leaf areas on each panel.
6. Add stencil layer 4, again lining it up with the stamped outlines. On some panels, blend Reactive Glitz Byzantine Green over the detail layer of the leaves to deepen the color and add shimmer. For a different look on other panels, blend Butter Bar Core Ink through this layer instead, which shifts the foliage to a fresh yellow-green and adds a warm glow.
7. Allow the panels to dry completely, then place one of the Contour Ink panels back into the same corner of the stamping platform. Treat the panel with anti-static powder.
8. Ink the background stamp with Clear Embossing & Watermark Ink and stamp over the panel two times. Remove the panel, cover with Gold Embossing Powder, tap off the excess, and heat set until melted. Repeat on additional panels as desired.
9. For another look, place a Contour Ink panel in the platform and stamp over the stenciled background with Hero Hues Unicorn Pigment Ink two or three times, drying between layers to build a bright white outline.
10. Stamp the “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” sentiments from the Poinsettia Pattern Clear Stamp Set on white cardstock strips with Intens-ified Black Ink, stamping twice for a bold impression. Trim into sentiment strips.
11. Cut narrow strips of colored cardstock slightly wider than the sentiment strips. Adhere each white sentiment strip centered over a colored strip.
12. Add foam tape to the back of the sentiment strips. Use a scoreboard to help position the strips at the same height on every card, then adhere across the stamped panels.
13. Mount each finished panel to an A2 white card base with liquid adhesive.
14. Finish by adding enamel dots or gems to flower centers and scattered around the background for extra shine and dimension.

If you want a fast holiday card background that looks detailed but takes minutes, stenciling is your best friend. Karen’s goal was to create a holiday card design that could be easily mass produced while still leaving space for creative touches, so she developed several designs using the same core products. That way, you can reproduce one design in quantity—or swap colors and details to keep things fresh while still working assembly-line style.

1. Pre-trim card panels to A2 size before you stencil so you don’t waste time inking areas that get cut off later.
2. Stencil snowflake design with one or two ink colors across the whole batch. A large blending brush will make this process go faster!
3. Optional: After stencil is removed, add additional ink-blending around edges for depth.
4. Place several panels in a splatter box and splatter White Acrylic Speckle with a fan brush over the background. Allow to dry.
5. Stamp the Christmas Sentiment Strips with Unicorn Pigment Ink on black cardstock and heat emboss with White Embossing Powder.
6. Die cut the messages with the Sentiment Strips Fancy Die.
7. Adhere message strips to snowflake background.
8. The Christmas Sentiment Strips paired with the Sentiment Strips Fancy Die are ideal for mass-producing cards. With one stamped impression and a single pass through your die-cutting machine, you get 42 perfectly sized message strips ready to go.

Jeannie’s holiday card design is a perfect example of mass production through smart prep work: instead of paper piecing each tree one at a time, you start by creating a multiple cardstock panels with diagonal strips of cardstock. You can diecut basic shapes from these backgrounds or use them as a pattern though a diecut window. Because you can use both the positive and negative tree shapes, that one striped panel turns into multiple clean, modern cards quickly—with minimal extra effort.

1. Cut strips of colored cardstock using a paper trimmer.
2. Apply adhesive to completely cover a card panel and randomly adhere strips of cardstock.
3. Use the Festive Tree Die Set to die cut the tree shape from each panel. You can use both the negative and positive pieces to create 2 cards from one panel.
4. Die cut stars from gold paper to adhere to top of tree.
5. Stamp multiple message from the Modern Holiday Greeting Stamp & Cut. onto a panel of cardstock and die cut with coordinating dies.
6. Combine tree elements with other solid cardstock colors to assemble a variety cards.

Our Infinity Dies are another great fit for this technique, and they make it easy to mass-produce cards for all kinds of occasions throughout the year—try the Egg Infinity Dies for Easter, Bat Infinity Dies for Halloween, Butterflies Infinity Dies for springtime cards, and 5-Point Stars Infinity Dies when you need a quick batch of birthday greetings.

Jennifer’s clean and modern gift box holiday cards are designed with efficiency in mind, making them an excellent choice for mass-producing holiday or winter-themed greetings. By stenciling one panel and die cutting it into multiple gift box pieces, you can quickly assemble a coordinated set of cards with minimal supplies and maximum impact. 

The cool blue palette and simple geometric patterns also make this design especially versatile—perfect not only for Christmas, but for elegant Hanukkah cards as well. Thoughtful finishing touches, like a hint of sparkle, give these cards a polished look while still keeping the process fast and approachable.

Instructions to create 3 cards at once:

1. Trim three Celestial cardstock panels to 4 ¾ x 3 ¼”
2. Trim three white card base to A4 size of 5 x 3 ½”.
3. Adhere the Celestial panels to each of the three card bases.
4. On Porcelain Betterpress panel, stencil layer #2 from the Gorgeous Giftwrap Layering Stencils and Periwinkle Core Ink.
5. Add bows to stenciled panel using the  Wrap It Up Letterpress and Foil Plates and Nautical Core Ink.
6. Die cut this panel using the Gift Boxes Die Set. This will give you six individual gift boxes.
7. Adhere two gift box die cuts per card with foam adhesive, leaving a spot to stamp a sentiment.
8. Stamp sentiment on each card using Nautical Core Ink.
9. Add an opal gem to center of each bow.

As you can see, mass-producing holiday cards doesn’t have to mean sacrificing creativity or style. Whether you prefer bold stenciled backgrounds, clever paper-pieced designs, no-fail color layering, or clean modern die-cut elements, each of these four approaches offers a fast, repeatable workflow that still delivers beautiful, handmade results. With a little prep and an assembly-line mindset, you can create a whole stack of festive cards.

Happy holiday crafting!