Christmas Decorations - Indoor Wreath

I love Christmas decorations and in an ideal world every room in the house would be festooned to bursting point. In reality though, every year the living room looks beautifully festive but the decoration of the rest of the house is sporadic at best. So I vow to craft up a storm for next Christmas, but it always seems to creep up on me! You know, it's ages away, it's ages away. it's ages away, oh shit it's here! It's like that scene out of Monty Python's The Holy Grail (but without the carnage 😂!) You'd think by now I'd be better prepared...

So in my attempt to boost the decorations stash I have made a few things, including this indoor wreath. I will be attaching one to every internal door in the house.

I cut a ring from Kraft card with a 15cm outer diameter. I then lined it with pine sprigs that I die cut (I don't know the brand) from green paper. I then die cut holly leaves from two shades of green mirror card using the holly dies in the Tattered Lace Holly & Robin set. Finally I cut several poinsettias using two sizes from the Tattered Lace Poinsettia 2016 set to place over the leaves around the frame. The wreath is finished off with a red bow at the top and a loop of red ribbon for hanging glued to the back. As I cut the holly from green mirror card, I went back over all of the berries with red glitter glue.

In our house the decorations go up on the 1st December. That's only a couple of days away so I won't have a full complement of decorations in time for that, BUT technically I've got until Christmas Day so I'll keep making them and adding them up until then.

Woodland Christmas

I've seen a few cards on Pinterest featuring a silver birch style background which I really liked.  So I bought myself a birch tree background cutting die and made my own version. I really like how it turned out.

I started with an A6 plain white card blank.

For the background I used Distress Stains in blocks of colour (from top to bottom: Chipped Sapphire, Wilted Violet+Broken China and Broken China).  I simply swiped the stain across the card in stripes, overlapping the colours in each block for a smoother transition.  Wilted Violet on its own was too purple, so went over the top of it with Broken China to get more of a blue hue.  I also dotted Chipped Sapphire across all three colour blocks in several places, which also helps to blend the colours.

I die cut the birch tree trunks from white card and lined the die cut up with the top and sides of the card over the coloured background.  The die cut did not reach all the way to the bottom so I cut a couple of snow mounds from white card and placed them at the bottom of the card, then went over them with a Spectrum Noir clear sparkle pen for a glistening snow effect.

The deer are from the Tattered Lace Family Outing die set.  I cut them from white card and coloured them using Spectrum Noir markers, going over the spots on their backs with a white gel pen.  I stuck the doe straight on to the card and used foam pads for the fawn.

At this point I decided to add some snowfall to the scene by dotting snowflakes onto the background using a white gel pen.

Finally, I stamped the sentiment into the corner.  The stamp I used is from a set that came with issue 35 of Creative Stamping magazine.

Dream A Little Dream

Back in September I bought a lot of dies (A LOT!).  I'm slowly working my way through cutting them all and trying them out in projects.  I loved this tree panel die, but interestingly what I had in mind for it is nothing like what I ended up creating.

I found a pad of watercolour paper in Lidl for a steal (so of course I bought some) and then I set out to make a few interesting backgrounds for a different project.  I dabbed Distress Stains (Peeled Paint, Festive Berries, Broken China and a touch of Mustard Seed) onto an old mirror (in lieu of a craft sheet) then spritzed with water and painted random patches of colour on to the watercolour paper until the paper was covered.

At first I cut the tree panel in white and coloured it in with watercolour pencils, but I didn't really like it, so I cut it in black and mounted it onto the background I had created.  It looked so pretty and whimsical, so I put the whole thing on the front of a card and added a sentiment from an old stamp set.

I used a black mat for this card which really highlights the tree, but if I had used any of the colours from the background for the mat, that colour would be highlighted. For example a blue mat would have highlighted the blue in the background and so on.  (A little tip that I picked up from Mel Heaton on Create & Craft TV.)