Holiday Crafting

Because there isn't quite enough to do around the holidays, what with getting the kids prepped for Christmas break at school and all the other random things going on, I decided to make Christmas (or Holiday or Winter or Seasonal or Etc.) cards this year. Of course the idea festered before I finally started them, and I'm not sure they'll get to anyone before Christmas - but everyone loves a New Years' card, right? Granted it was a bit of a process, but I'm kind of psyched about how they've turned out. The inside of the card features a sweet stamp with a generic seasonal greeting that I figure anyone can appreciate. It will very likely make an encore performance at future holidays.

Surprise, surprise, I went with a snowflake motif.

I worked on the snowflakes over several evenings, they were actually fairly quick and easy to cut out. Because of all the folding, they needed to be flattened out which was easily accomplished between the pages of a book. Thanks to the dog or cats, my efforts to keep the blue confetti-like scraps from going everywhere was foiled when *someone* got into the waste basket that I had so painstakingly cut things into. Oh well. 

 

The snowflake patterns came primarily from a I bought a book sometime this past fall, Snowflakes, Creative Paper Cutouts, by Cindy Higham, that I absolutely adored. I liked quite a few of the patterns, and initially was going to make them out of different colored origami paper, since it was already about the size I wanted. But, I had a ton of light blue paper leftover from the invites I made for the sister's wedding shower several summers ago and decided it was more suitable. It looks nice and crisp against the white card stock I used for the card. Very wintry. I followed a bunch of her templates, but also went rogue and cut other random patterns. After all, no two snowflakes are alike!

I affixed the snowflakes with spray adhesive because using a glue stick or regular glue seemed like it would be a painfully long process, and glue sticks never really seem to stick long term. I'm hoping the spray adhesive works out. The adhesive was actually at the suggestion of the art teacher at school and was VERY quick and easy - those art teachers are so smart. I laid the snowflakes on wax paper to spray them- it kept the glue from getting everywhere, and they didn't stick to the wax paper. It took several rounds to get them all, and I mostly avoided getting dog or cat hair on them (a hazard of working on the floor . . . it just seemed easiest at the time).

a flock of cards, awaiting several more of their brethren



I scored some envelopes on sale from Paper Source, my new guilty pleasure - I love all of their stuff. They happened to have about the size I wanted which made things fantastically easier. And the USPS has some lovely seasonal Forever Stamps that I'm psyched about, too. So, twenty or thirtyish cards later (over-ambitious much?) they're almost ready to send out.  Now if I could only find the list of folks I'd made . . .

  

To top that off, I went to a needle-felting ornament workshop at the school last night and last Thursday. Not that I need another craft in my life, but it was super easy and fun. A bit of a stress-reliever, to boot. I can get supplies at the shop on island that is owned by my friend, who ran the workshop, so I'm sure I'll find time to make more.

 

swirls



and yes, a snowflake



 Oh, and it's "homemade Christmas" this year, and I'm over halfway done with the gifts (where does this time come from??). But, more on those later - can't ruin the surprise!