Paper Christmas Projects

Have you seen the Make a Gift Bow from a Magazine Page tutorial over at How About Orange?  I saw it last year but ran out of time to try it out.  This year I started early and love how they turned out.  Next I'm going to try making some smaller ones for tiny gifts.  They're fun to make and you likely have all the supplies needed.  I highly suggest you try it out! (They make a very good "while watching TV" craft.)

These glitter stars come from the paper I bought back in October.  Dozens of wish stars later I have a garland!  I'm hoping to get a picture of it hanging up for you but it's been difficult to capture the glitter at a distance.  Any tips?

Christmas Cards - Quick Idea

I think this qualifies as a quick idea - mainly because you get 4 cards made at once!  And if I say so myself, they look pretty good!

What you need:

• tissue paper in red and green
• heavy white paper or cardstock
• gold paint pen (this isn't the one I have but very similar)
• watercolour paints and paint brush (optional)

What you do:

• Cut out flower shapes from the red tissue
• Cut out leaf shapes from the green tissue (make it faster by cutting 3 or 4 layers at once!)
• Glue shapes to white paper
• Outline all shapes and add detail (vein on leaf, dots on flowers) with gold paint pen
• Fill in the background with a light watercolour wash (optional)

Then cut your work of art into smaller rectangles to glue on blank cards, outline in gold pen and you're done!

 

I used a light green watercolour wash on these, mainly because I felt like painting, but I think I prefer the crispness of the plain white, unpainted background.  

Christmas Cards

I thought I'd share a couple of my latest card designs.  The one on the left was super simple to make: cut out a section of scrapbooking paper, stick it on a card and add little strips of fabric-ribbon-sticker to the top and bottom.  I'd made the fabric-ribbon-sticker beforehand by sticking a length of double sided tape to the backside of fabric and cutting the width in half with my rotary cutter.  The card on the right was made by cutting a tree shape out of glitter card stock (any guesses where I got my tree design from?) and adding some stick on red rhinestones.  I love using the blank value pack cards from Michael's.  It makes card making a lot more enjoyable (and faster) to have pre-cut cards with envelopes to match!