Mini Holly Wreaths

I've been having so much fun making mini holly wreaths. They're so adorable and perfectly sized to sit on the front of an A6 card or to make great hanging ornaments for the Christmas tree.

I made the holly in CraftArtist 2 by using the star shape, selecting the number of points and then using the edit nodes function to manipulate the shape.  I then imported the shape (jpeg) into Silhouette software and used the trace function to generate a cut file. Then it was just a matter of filling the page with the holly in a couple of different sizes and cutting them out from lots of different shades of mirror card with my Portrait.  It probably would have been much easier to download the shape from the Silhoutte store, but where's the fun in that?!

I also cut out lots of rings with an outer diameter of 9cm and an inner diameter of 7.5cm to act as the wreath bases.  Before sticking the holly down I hand-embossed each one (using a blunt pencil or scoring tool) with leaf veins. 4mm rhinestones act as berries and the whole thing is finished off with a small bow. 

Various shades of green on the same wreath give the illusion of depth and I also enjoyed playing around with other colours for a more contemporary look. For the hanging ornaments I added a hanging loop and stuck another round of leaves on the backside so that the wreath looks good on both sides.  Made a little bigger they can be used on A5 cards, and a little bigger again they look great as inside door decorations.  I'll definitely be making more wreaths again next year.