Still Got my Christmas Crafty Pants On!

In continuation from Friday, I have made some progress on my card making. Seeing as for the most part I have been making them up as I go along, it's been rather time consuming. Putting bits here, and there, seeing if this goes well with that, and after way too much time playing around with my design, finally gluing it in place...next thing I know, its already midnight and I've only finished one card! (Don't worry they don't take this long to make if you're organised and already know what design you're going to do) Uh Oh! I'd better get a wiggle on if I want to get them posted to the Family in the UK on time for Christmas!

 Last year I procrastinated waaaaaay too long and ended up posting them a week before Christmas. BAD MOVE! We always send them all over in one big A4 size envelope to the Grandparents house, then they then distribute them to all the family members for us. 

One A4 size envelope, you wouldn't think would cost too much to post right?

*ahem* "That will be $46 please...." The polite post office woman said.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY? $4 to $6 right...???..."
"No, FORTY SIX..."

Could not believe my ears.

So the moral of that story is, don't put off dealing with the overseas Christmas cards unless you're rich.

Anyway, back to the point of this post, the making of the Christmas cards. I've put together a tutorial for you if you are interested in recreating them.

I think the stockings is my favourite design so far...

I have used KaiserCraft large mat stack scrapbook "paper". It says paper, but it's really more of a thin card, so its PERFECT for card making.

Begin with a piece cut out to 22cm x 16cm. (or really whatever size you want, this just happens to be the size I made mine.)

Please excuse my huckery nail polish...2 kids...limited time...enough said. Its actually amazing that I even have any nail polish on to be honest haha, it would suggest I actually had some down time at some stage in the not so distant past.

Now fold it in half, so you have the print on the INSIDE of the card. I love making cards like this, it gives the recipient a bit of a "OOhhh!" when they open it.

The print doesn't necessarily have to be typically Christmas either. I actually have no Christmas themed paper laying about at the moment (I know, can you BELIEVE it!? I can't!) so just found some fancy prints that I thought could work well and went with it. I personally think they turned out pretty nicely.

 Once you've decided on your print, cut and folded your cards, you need to lay some tracing paper (or an equally thin/transparent paper) over the top so you can write a message that doesn't get lost in the magnificent print you just picked out!

I painted on a little black dotted border but that's just because I can never leave well enough alone and felt like it "needed" something.

Now glue this in with the tiniest little smidges of modpodge, not too much or you risk the paper wrinkling up and looking terrible. Hot glue could be used here too but because the tracing paper is so thin, the hot glue often leaves too much of a bump showing where it's set.

In another one of my cards, (which I'll show next) although it didn't NEED it, once again I couldn't resist embellishing the tracing paper by adding the ribbon as a border and a hand tied bow (that bow actually covers where my ribbon edge finishes) to make it super fancy and special.

Now for decorating the front of the card.
1.    Start with the background, you could just leave it plain white, but I wanted to give it something a little extra (typical I know, but you know me now, I have a problem!). So I created a snow effect by mixing some silver glitter with white paint and using a paper doily as a stencil, then dabbing the paint over the top like so.

It only takes a couple of minutes to completely dry and then it has a beautiful sparkly snow effect.
The pictures don't really do it justice, but I promise it looks good when and is worth the extra couple of minutes it takes to do.

2.   Next just sketch out a really basic stocking shape onto some scrap booking paper and add a little strip of a complimenting colour to the top of the stocking.

You can leave it like this (as on the left) which is simple and effective. (looking at it now, I'm thinking outlining it with a black fine tip pen would bring it out more.) Or if you want to add more detailing, you can paint on some white stitching around the edges, or even some little black # marks for a scruffy old stocking look.
If you can't be bothered getting the paint out for this tiny amount of work, using a twink pen is a clever trick for this.

3.  Now cut a long piece of twine, (I've used florists hessian twine here, you can get this from spotlight, and probably from any emporium) and glue this across the top, BUT ONLY ONE LITTLE DAB AT EACH END, don't glue all the way across or you wont be able to attach your stockings.

4.   Cut three, 4cm strips of ribbon or twine and attach as follows,
place ribbon under the twine, and then fold over.

5.  When folded over, take a wee dab of hot glue and secure the ribbon ends together, but don't glue to the paper yet. Now using a tiny dab of hot glue on the very top part of your stockings attach JUST to the ribbon, again don't glue to the paper yet. By doing it this way it gives you a chance to move your stockings along the twine to space them out to your preference. Obviously once they are glued to the paper there is no going back.  So taking this series of steps can leave you with a much better end result, than if you glue them straight to the paper one by one and then get to the end and go, whoops, I wish I'd popped that first one a bit closer to the edge etc.
Now you've got your positioning how you want them, a quick dab of hot glue on each stocking to secure to the card and you're done.

Now for a couple of Christmas tree cards, one quick and super simple, one more elaborate and fiddly.
Don't let elaborate and fiddly put you off though, promise its not too difficult!

First up the elaborate fiddly tree on the left. It was inspired by a design I pinned on pinterest here http://www.pinterest.com/pin/196258496232781493/

The picture doesn't really do it justice, as the frilly doily bit gets lost in the picture, but it looks great in real life. The doily looks a bit like snowy layers on the tree.

Starting with paper doily's (I love those things! so great in so many art/craft projects!) cut out 3 pieces of the lacy looking bits, one for the bottom layer of the tree, one for the middle and one for the top, descending in size. 

The rest of the tree is made up of little pieces of patterned scrap book paper rolled into little cigars and glued in place with modpodge.

Modpodge does work well, but if you're in a hurry, might I suggest cranking out the hot glue gun? I got half way through this tree with the modpodge technique and then swapped to the glue gun. Can be messier with strings of glue going everywhere but if you're careful you can achieve a gorgeous card very quickly.

Over the top of the doily sections, I used bits of beaded wire hot glued into place to look a bit like a beaded garland, or I suppose it could imitate Christmas lights if you use a multi-colour beaded wire?

To top the tree I have used a little square diamante embellishment I picked up from an emporium. Then used a little hand tied the red bow to fill up some of that empty background. It just looked too bare without it. Or maybe that's my inability to leave it as is coming out again ;)

It is the inside of this one which I went all out on the inside with.

For the simpler card, I very quickly cut triangles of complimenting green scrapbook card out and glued them in place. Then added the beads to look like bauble ornaments.

 Add a quick silver bow and we're done with that one!

Eeeeasy peasy!

*phew*

I try to get these done while my little girl is either A. at preschool, or B. at night when she'd in bed....but of course sometimes the mess is too elaborate to tidy away for the night, just to pull it all out again the following evening.
So of course she discovered my treasure trove on Saturday morning and after much begging, pleading and promising to be good all day! She was allowed to make a Christmas card of her own.

Possibly the cutest card I've ever laid eyes on, (I could be a bit biased here) and I think I'll be letting her make a few more for the Grandparents on Wednesday when she's home with me. I'm sure they will appreciate them!
(Wednesday is not a preschool day and I'm constantly trying to think of things we can do to keep her entertained.) 

So in conclusion to this mammoth post, we have completed 4 different Christmas card designs, I encourage you to let the little ones loose on a few, they have sooooo much fun, and really, its not actually any  creating any more mess than when I make them!

For now, get your Christmas crafty pants on, your kiddies all painty and stay beautiful! x