Having committed to getting my Christmas cards made early this year I have already made more than half of what I need but staying at home has facilitated getting farther ahead so I have made this set of cards. I cut the ornaments and trees from a sheet of beautiful stained glass glitter paper my sister gave me a while back. I cut a strip off the large sheet and cut the first three ornaments with one of the dies in the Heirloom Ornament die set from Nestibilities. From what was left of the strip I cut a round one (Nestibilities) and three little triangle trees. I wanted to layer my elements on black which worked with the round ornament because I have the double set of the Classic Circles ( Nestiblities) so I was able to cut a black layer for it. The trees were easy as they are just triangles. For the teardrop ornaments it required a bit more engineering. I had created myself a tool for practicing and teaching calligraphy at one point in time by whittling down the sides of two pencils and then tying them together so I could easily demonstrate the proper angle and how the flat nib forms the letters. I went looking for it and found it!!!!!!!!! I used it to trace the shape of the ornaments onto black cardstock. I then fussy cut on the second line which was relatively easy. Pretty happy with how that worked out and will have to keep that in mind for any other custom layers I might need to make. I then die cut snowflakes to mount in the centers using a Cuttlebug set which I have not used very often but were the perfect size for these ornaments. I mounted them to the ornaments using tiny black brads and added little white fabric snowflake in between. Love how they turned out!! Next, I created toppers for my ornaments. I used my scallop decorative scissors to trim the edge of a thin strip of bright silver foil and then trimmed them into segments which would be right for each ornament. I mounted them to my layered ornaments using white glue applied with a fine tip applicator. For backgrounds I decided on this funky snowflake paper in my stash which was laser printed a while back from a digital wallpaper file. I decided to add a layer of embossed silver cardstock between them. I coloured a length of thick white thread using a permanent marker to create the hangers for my ornaments. I used different embossing folders for all of them and mounted the silver pieces to the backgrounds and then added the ornaments using 3D foam tape, adhered the thread hangers to the back of the background paper using regular tape and then mounted these large elements to coordinating card fronts. I punched silver foil stars for my trees and mounted them with the silver strip as a backdrop. I added a small black snowflake and then a white fabric one to one of the trees to make it stand out. I decided against greetings as they seemed to be balanced without them. So another few cards to add to the stash!! Therese
