I hear Faint of Butt carols are all the rage this year.

Seriously though any personally written card is better than store bought. Abstract backgrounds made from small overlapping bits of tissue are mod and festive.

You can cut out designs from your main paper - I usually use black construction paper - and then glue in tissue paper on the back for a stained glass look. That's fun for one or two; too time consuming for all of them. Or what about dropping wet ink or watercolor onto wet paper and letting it roll around, so you get abstract/almost marbleized backgrounds and then when it's dry making glitter shapes on top? I might do that myself now that I've thought of it. Seriously though if you're planning to do a lot it helps to think about how best to mass produce them, otherwise (ymmv, this is me) you're up at 3 a.m. trying to just do one last damn card and you find yourself hating your friends, your own determination to make cards and the world, which is so un-christmasy. So my advice is to try not to get too individualized or freaked about details but think about how to make a lot at a time.

This page has some cool ideas. The execution might be a bit hokey for you (country-ish and plaid-ish), but you might get an idea from the layout or construction of the cards.

And this group of images - the silver star and tree at the bottom would be simple and elegant to draw. You could draw them with glue and then sprinkle the glue with glitter, and use some silver acrylic paint. See the lavender card, the one that looks like a wrapped gift? It's just lavender tissue paper, silver paint and some beads. I really like the silver star on the navy blue background, too.

I make my own cards every year. My three main staples are a paper punch in the shape of a star, a few rubber stamps (or woodcuts), and some ribbon. Those three things, along with some nice paper, are a good start to making some absolutely gorgeous cards. Last year my thing was copper, and I used copper metallic ribbon, copper acrylic paint for the stencils (which were Moravian stars and they were really beautiful), and recycled parchment paper. I used some tissue paper (like what is behind the stars on that second page I linked to) - I ripped (it looks better than cutting) a square and pasted it in the middle of the card, and stamped a Moravian star in the middle. Sometimes I outlined the tissue paper in copper ribbon and then put lumpy blobs of copper acrylic paint all over the ribbon. It sounds weird, but they were really something. I had several people asking if I would take orders to make Christmas cards for them.

(which I didn't because that would take all the fun out of it. I make my own wrapping paper too, out of kraft paper and paint)

For the last couple of weeks, I've used images printed onto photo paper and pasted onto card. Two years ago, I went for a variety of christmas images culled from google search including...
- The poster for "White Christmas"
- A picture of a Tardis in a Dickensesque Xmas scene.
- The Christmas Island national flag.

Last year, I went for something else which I'm emailing to you (not linking) as I've plans to recycle it as my official metachat chrismass card.

Envelopes are the hardest part of any homemade Christmas card you're going to actually mail. I highly recommend splurging and buying the pre-folded blank cards with envelopes at your local craft store.

I've had pretty good results using just assorted origami paper, some small-ish cookie cutters for shapes, cutting some freehand shapes, and glue and whatever else "fancy" you want to stick on them.

Its wicked fun - enjoy!!

Thanks for all the great ideas and advice! Watercolours and glitter sound good for colour and fun. iconomy, the designs on the second page were exactly the kind of thing I had in minds - thanks. I'm not even going to try to make the envelopes - those are pre-made.