Craft with Sarah’s 2025 Year in Review!
Hello and welcome to my “look back” at all of the crafty fun that we had together in 2025. Grab a cup of tea, get comfy, and let’s get started!
At the start of each year, I like to take a look back at the previous year to reflect and remember the projects that were made, to understand what designs were the most (and least!) popular, and so that my team and I can plan what comes next.
This year, I thought it would be fun to share the results with you!
It’s your chance to see a little bit of the “behind the scenes” at Craft with Sarah, and get a glimpse of what will be coming out in the year ahead.
Thank you so much for being part of Craft with Sarah. I hope that you enjoyed the projects that were shared in 2025, and that you’ve got your cardstock, glue and foam squares all prepared ready for 2026!
New Craft with Sarah Website
The biggest change in 2025 was our website relaunch in February. This was a huge undertaking that was around 18 months in the making, so it was very exciting to see it finally live.
The main aims of the new website were to make it faster to run, easier to use, simpler to find/search for designs, and to make more straightforward for us to upload new SVGs and manage our content and events.
Ahead of the new website launch, we retired our Craft Clubhouse SVG club and replaced it with a new and improved membership called “Papercraft Porch”.
Members get Design Credits added to their account each month, to use on downloading the SVGs from our shop – which is MUCH more cost effective than purchasing files individually.
We introduced several fun features such as monthly craft Challenges, Design Requests and monthly video Classes recorded for Cricut, Silhouette and ScanNCut machines.
Personally, I’ve enjoyed recording the Classes as it’s given me a great excuse to really get to know Silhouette Studio and CanvasWorkspace (for ScanNCut)… and I might possibly have treated myself to one of each of those cutting machines too… for testing purposes, of course. 🤣
Find out more about Papercraft Porch
Craft Countdown Events
Five events took place in 2025: the Gnome Craft Countdown, Card Making Countdown, Halloween Craft Countdown, Christmas Craft Countdown and Advent Calendar.
Craft Countdowns are my favourite things to work on, as it gives a wonderful opportunity to experiment with projects that are a little bit out of the ordinary – particularly 3D projects.
I’m always impressed with seeing photos of your interpretations of the Countdown designs. Looking through my Facebook group during Craft Countdowns is like a mini “Christmas” every day.
The best part of the day is loading up Facebook first thing in the morning to see the new photos that have come in overnight. Seeing what you make with our designs is really motivating. I love seeing how you interpret the designs, customize them, and make them your own.
The Christmas Countdown was the most popular of 2025, with almost 20,000 free tickets register (wow!).
If you took part in any of the Countdowns, I really hope that you enjoyed the projects – and that you continue to take part in the new Countdowns this year!
The top 10 most downloaded files from ALL the 2025 Craft Countdowns were:
- Golden Nativity Card
- Spinning Wheel Advent Calendar
- Decorative Borders
- Rocker Cards
- Word Circle Cards
- Z Fold Cards
- Turn the Wheel Cards
- Add-a-Number Cards
- 3D Christmas Train
- Gingerbread Village
The ten least download projects were:
- 3D Crystal Ball Tower
- Snow Pets
- Vampire Scare Box
- Christmas Bunting
- Gnome Light-Up Shadow Box
- Pastel Kawaii Build-Down Shadow Box
- Keep Out Sign
- Angel Christmas Tree Topper
- Dangling Spider Card
- A2 Halloween Cards
The lists might be slightly inaccurate as unfortunately we experienced a tracking error with the first Countdown of the year, the Gnome Craft Countdown, where all the downloads tracked as the same project name instead of separating them out.
This was corrected for the next Countdown, so the lists only show the downloads from the Card Making Countdown onwards.
It’s interesting that 6 out of the 10 most downloaded projects were from the Card Making Countdown (and one of the other projects was for a card too).
I LOVE card making with my Cricut, so it’s great to see that so many of you do too! We will definitely be bringing the Card Making Countdown back for 2026!
I wasn’t surprised to see that Halloween projects dominate “least downloaded” list, as that was the least attended Countdown overall.
I think perhaps Halloween is a bit more of a “niche” holiday, so maybe we need to rethink how the Halloween event works – or to perhaps combine it with general “Fall” projects.
That way, if you aren’t a spooky fan, there would be a number of alternative projects that you may like to make instead.
We’ll revisit this later in the year when it comes to planning the Halloween event. We like to start things early… but thinking about Halloween in January is definitely TOO early.
2026 Craft Countdowns
We are currently putting the finishing touches to the first Craft Countdown event of 2026 – and it’s the return of our GNOME themed event!
Free ticket registration will open on Saturday 24th January and the Countdown takes place over 14 days from 7th – 20th February.
The other Craft Countdowns and events for 2026 will be:
- *NEW* theme: Spring Craft Countdown (April)
- Card Making Countdown (June)
- Halloween (and Fall?) Craft Countdown (September)
- Christmas Craft Countdown (November)
- Advent Calendar (December)
My Favourite Projects
My favourite project of the entire year was the 3D candelabra from the Halloween Craft Countdown.
Although it’s one of the more challenging tutorials, it looks so beautiful when it’s done that it’s definitely worth the time taken to make it. And the pieces come apart to make it easier to store.
Other 3D projects that I particularly enjoyed are the spinning Advent Calendar, 3D Christmas train, and Nativity star tree.
Slot-together lanterns
2025 was the “year of lanterns”, with lots of new light-up projects being created.
I like the vulture lantern, watering can lantern, baby dragon lantern and rainbow lantern the best, but with almost 150 different designs, it was tough to choose.
Layered SVGs
Heading away from 3D projects and back towards layered SVGs, a special mention has to go to the free flower pot series that ran throughout 2025. Nineteen different flower pots were released over the year.
The most downloaded flowers were the any-occasion design, Easter tulips, birthday flowers, heart flowers and Mother’s Day flowers.
After much deliberation, we have decided not to do a similar themed series for 2026. Instead, we’ll be focusing on adding a bit more variety for a wider range of paper craft projects. Expect to see LOTS of fun ideas added to our blog in the second half of the year!
Popular Shop Designs
Cute animals
I looked through the most downloaded layered SVGs from our shop and it was lovely to see that 7 of the “top 10” designs were from the cute animal collection that launched last April.
I was nervous about releasing those designs as they are simpler and more “cartoony” than our usual style, so it’s wonderful to see that you enjoyed them.
What I really like about the cute animal collection is the designs can be cut very small, making them great for card making, scrapbooking, magnets, gift tags and similar crafts.
Layered gnome SVGs
The other 3 in the “top 10” were gnome designs. If you’ve been part of Craft with Sarah for a while, you’ll know that I love gnomes. There are now over 200 different pairs, covering all kinds of themes such as holidays and occasion, sports, holidays, countries, professions, seasons and so much more.
The most downloaded gnomes in 2025 were the vacation gnomes, baking bread gnomes and zookeeper gnomes.
Looking Ahead
If you’ve made it this far down the page, well done – and don’t worry, you’re almost at the end!
I’d like to thank my amazing team for all their wonderful work, not just last year, but always, and for them always supporting me and saying “yes” when I come up with crazy ideas for 3D projects and more gnomes than anyone would have thought possible.
Let’s finish with a little look ahead at what’s coming next.
I don’t usually share much about my personal life as I am a very introverted, private person, so I have ummed and ahhed about whether to keep the next section in this review, but I think it helps to give context to our decisions about new releases in the next few months.
I had got into the habit of working 70+ hour weeks for most of last year, and unfortunately that started to have an impact. This came to a head over the past couple of months and I’ve finally realised that I need to improve my work-life balance to focus more on my health and overall wellbeing.
As such, I have made the decision to not release any new Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year or St Patrick’s Day SVGs / tutorials this year.
It takes around a month for us to complete all the steps that go into releasing a brand new tutorial – including the artwork design, SVG creation, testing, making amends if needed, re-testing, filming a video, editing, photography, writing the tutorial, saving the step-by-step photos, editing the photos of the final project, creating different file versions for different cutting machines, creating assembly guides, adding to the website, writing a newsletter and posting on social media. There are probably other steps I’ve forgotten too!
As those Holidays are all coming fairly soon and we haven’t yet started any projects for them, we feel that we’d rather take more time to create some truly awesome designs for Easter and beyond, rather than try to rush out ideas that would inevitably put us behind with other projects.
However, we will be sending out reminders of the existing projects on the website nearer the holidays, in case there are older projects that you may have missed.
Hopefully you will still be able to find something “new to you”, even if it isn’t new to the site.
That doesn’t mean there won’t be ANY new freebies coming up… we’ve got a few things in the pipeline at the moment, but they are more for “any occasion” rather than specifically Holiday themed.
Once I’ve worked through my backlog of tasks that have built up over the past couple of months, we’ll be able to get back more like our usual release schedule. Which I am very much looking forward to!
But don’t worry – all new “1st of the month” Papercraft Porch content will still be released on schedule. February’s A2 card designs are already waiting for upload, and the completed design requests are being test-cut next week.
To summarise… things may be a little quiet for the next two months or so, but then we’ll find our stride again and be back to releasing regular card making, paper craft and Cricut crafting tutorials for you to enjoy.
I feel like all the “personal talk” made it sound like we’re ending the wrap-up on a negative, but in fact it’s the opposite – we are feeling very excited and positive about the year ahead and we can’t wait to get back to sharing SVGs with you.
Our focus will be on creating more original, unique projects that we can put our collective thought and love into, rather than worrying about hitting a certain number of designs.
For now though, I’d love for you to share photos of you’re favourite “Craft with Sarah” project from last year, either by posting in our Facebook group or in the website Community.
There’s nothing more enjoyable or motivating for us than seeing what you make with our designs. After all, we only do what we do so that YOU can do what YOU do, and it’s your kind and generous feedback and seeing your crafty enjoyment and project satisfaction that keeps us going.
If you’ve got an idea for a future tutorial, or if you’d like to give feedback on anything written in this review, please email [email protected]
I respond to all “Craft with Sarah” emails personally, and please remember that I am on UK time so there may be time differences between us. My current response time to non-urgent emails is around three days, but rest assured, you will get a reply.
Thank you for reading, and for being part of Craft with Sarah.
I appreciate you and am so grateful for your support. 🥰
As always, happy crafting.
Love,
Sarah x
