Saturday, December 14, 2013

Multiple Christmas Card Designs from One Paper Pack (Joyeux Noel)

For the most part, all you need is a pack of envelopes, the Joyeux Noel paper pack from Hobby Lobby that is 8.5 by 11, glue and mounting dots.

For one of the cards, I did use a present sticker and glitter glue, red ink or marker, and a green inkpad or marker would be helpful but you can get by without.

I started off by cutting a half inch of the narrow side of the paper, then cutting the sheet in half.  This gave me 5.5 x 8 pieces of paper that folded into 4 x 5.5 cards, which is the size of my envelopes.  The paper is good enough that I used it as a base, except on the Santa card which I had to cut just a front out and glue to a different card base.

The poinsettia cards were my favorite.  To make these, I cut strips of paper 4 inches long by 2 inches wide.  On the back of one, I drew the shape I wanted for a poinsettia petal.  I would argue there is little need to print out a template, as they are mostly an oval with wavy edges. As with most things, irregularity is actually your friend on this one.

I cut five sheets at once to make sure that my petals were close enough alike.  I used the same process for leaves and glued them down first.  Next, I glued 3 base colors down flat to the card, then put the two printed ones on mounting dots.  You can bend and fold the edges if you like to give them a little texture, or curl the tips up.  Cut off any excess material. I folded a small scrap of paper over a couple times to cut out three rough small circles to put in the center.

For the tree cards, I used the tree paper as the base, then glued 1.5 inch by 4 inch scraps over the top and bottom.  To create the white cores on the smaller details, you will need to tear some paper.  Working SLOWLY to make sure you get the look you want, tear the part that you DO NOT WANT TO USE (e.g. the top part and you want the bottom to use, or similar) TOWARD YOU.  The part you do want to use you should be slowly pulling away from you.  By keeping your fingers close to where the tear is, you can manipulate the paper to get peaks and curves as desired.  Glue these accents right on the line of the border scraps.

I used some of the sheet music pages to make the birch trees in the card with the redbird.  I used varying widths of paper, then used the backside of another sheet to give myself some white snow.  I hit the snow and a few places on the trees with glitter glue.  Next, I freehanded a small bird on the back of the red and white paper, cut it out, and colored over it with a red marker.  This left the lighter details while toning down the color differences.  This bird was attached using a mounting dot.

Finally, for the busy card on the bottom right, I used the printed paper for the base, and used another sheet of it to cut out a few details like a piece of the stamp, Santa's face, and a tree.  These I put on the card where the image was on the base, but used mounting dots to give them depth.  I hit the Santa and the tree with glitter glue.

When I glitter things, I use a Q-tip to just paint a little glue on.  My glitter glue is close to being empty anyway and it has not wanted to play nicely, so that is a nice little workaround.

This did not use hardly any of the paper pack at all, and I plan on using some of the paper to make some simple Christmas tags to put on things.  Considering this paper was half price, I really feel like it was a good deal considering how little extra things I had to buy to make this all come together.

Happy crafting! Pin It Now!

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