Quilted Nature Christmas cards

A few more Christmas cards!!  I have had this stack of cardstock sitting on my desk since I made these cards.  Today, I decided to make with them into cards.  I used the Stack and Whack technique that I used for the last ones with a much different cutting pattern.  I stacked my four pieces of patterned cardstock - 2 blue and 2 green and made my cuts - ten in all.  There are two that are almost completely hidden by the focal element and could have been eliminated - hind sight is a wonderful thing!!  I deconstructed my stacks and created four unique layouts by arranging the pieces in a different order.  I used regular tape on the back to hold the pieces together during reconstruction, double sided tape to adhere the assembled unit to the card front and added a row of stitching all the way around the outside using my sewing machine and white thread.  I added faux stitching on the green pieces using a white gel pen.  I used a slot punch (SU) to create an opening on the spine in which I inserted one end of a piece of white vintage seam binding.  I adhered both ends to the inside of the card front using double sided tape.  I tied a short piece to the long piece to simulate a bow.  I adhered a decorative label (SU) punchie in red over the seam binding using 3D foam tape and sewed my laser printed greeting to the card just below it.  I watercoloured my oval (NS) laser printed cardinal images (Beccy's), distressed their edges and adhered them to the center of the labels.
Happy to have a few more done.  They are appropriate for Sylvia's February Challenge - Christmas animals. You can find her monthly Christmas card challenge here.  That makes my total 27 for this year!!
Therese

Quilted Christmas cards

Another set of Christmas cards I made when my sister was visiting!!  I was thinking Christmas trees when I came up with this cutting design but did not fully appreciate that more balance was needed between the two colours for all of the green ones to look like trees though it was serendipity that the blue ones looked like mountains and that worked just as well with my design.  I layered two different blue decorative papers and two different green decorative papers over each other (4" x 5.25"), held them together with bull clips on the edges and started making cuts - seven in all - using my paper cutter.  This is called "Stack and Whack" in the quilting world. With all the pieces in stacks I started creating individual layers - like a puzzle - using the different coloured layers. Once I had pieced together the four layers I glued them to red quarter sheets of cardstock by putting just a small amount of glue in the middle of each of the pieces and then used my sewing machine with white thread to sew all of them to the red layers.  I also sewed around the outside edge.  Glue and sewing needles do not mix well which is why I only glued the pieces in the centers to avoid having to stitch through glue. I found the laser printed greetings in my stash, layered them to red and then to my decorative stitched layers.  I trimmed the red edges close and then glued the mountain ones to blue cardstock and the tree ones to green card fronts.  I have another stack of decorative papers which I will cut with a different pattern to give me four more cards.
This design works well with 12x12 decorative papers because you are cutting your layers to 4 inches. Really love the graphic quality of these cards!!

Therese