For most of you I expect this post is too late to inspire your Christmas cards for this year. I didn't want to blog about it too early as it would spoil the surprise for those receiving them. Pop in on your Pinterest or something and you'll be ready to go next Christmas.
I send about 50 cards to friends and family that don't live locally so always want to come up with a design that can be made and replicated relatively quickly. This year I saw an idea in a Prima magazine someone gave me using gingerbread men. They look really cute but cutting out 50 gingerbread men by hand would have been pretty time consuming so I came up with this idea instead where the Christmas tree is just a simple triangle which can be cut easily and quickly on a guillotine.
It's pretty easy to see what I did but here are some simple instructions in case you want an extra hand.
- Cards and envelopes
- Green card
- Yellow card
- Christmas patterned or paper
- Thread (I used some red and some sparkly cotton)
- Star cutter
- Guillotine
- Pritt stick
- Double sided tape
- Sewing machine
- Merry Christmas rubber stamp (optional)
What to do....
- Cut a strip of green card to a width of 7 cm. along one edge make a small pencil mark every 4cm. Along the other edge make a mark 2cm in and then every 4cm thereafter. Use the guillotine to cut lines between the marks to make isosceles triangles.
- Cut the Christmas paper into rectangles slightly smaller than your cards. Mine are 4in by3in because the card was 12x12in but you can adapt that depending on the shape of your card to ensure you don't have lots of waste. Use the Pruitt stick to glue these onto the cards
- Use the yellow card and the star cutter to cut out some small stars.
- Thread up your sewing machine and select an interesting stitch. My machine has some fancy ones but don't worry if your doesn't. A simple but wide zigzag stitch is pretty effective. Make a few lines of stitching across each green triangle. This in undoubtedly the most fiddly bit of these cards. Play about with different stitches and see what looks best. By the end I had it perfected and wasn't cutting the thread between each line but just pulling it through a few centeremetres and turning the tree to minimise waste of the thread.
- On the back of each tree put a strip of double sided tape up the two long sides of the triangle. Try and catch all the thread ends under the tape to secure the stitches and tidy them up from the front.
- Peel off the other side of the tape a stick one tree on top of the decorative paper on each card. Use the Pritt stick to stick a star on the top of each tree.
- Your cards are done now but if you have one use a Merry Christmas stamp on the inside of each. I think it finishes them off nicely and it saves you writing it 50 times!
Happy Christmas. Cassie. Xx
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