Day 5 – Make a Christmas Card by Guest Jessica Griffin

Jessica Griffin is our guest blogger today and she will be sharing a little Christmas card tutorial. Her cards are fabulous and they sound fairly simple and doable for normal people like you and I. For Day 5, get your kids involved helping you make this card or unearth your construction paper, glue, scissors, etc. and let them create their own. Jessica has more great card making ideas on her blog, Can You Pixel This. Thanks, Jessica!

Every day I’m improving my card making skills. It definitely doesn’t happen over night! Anyways, I was doing dishes, and remembered the cookie cutters (a gingerbread man, and a Christmas tree) my mother in law sent us last year for Christmas. I had an empty cereal box kicking around, so I decided to trace the cookie cutters onto the cardboard. I used my Thyme colored dew drop to ink the tree. Once that was completed I started digging through my stash and found these papers: I decided on Flannel Shirt by Basic Grey. I picked up some red, polka dotted paper also by Basic Grey called Snowfall Cranberry, and solid green paper. The collection I used has been discontinued, however, you could use any type of paper, and pattern. I used my mini mister (filled with water) mixed with Perfect Pearls and sprayed the entire tree. Because you’re spraying cardboard with water, it’s going to curl. So, I used my heat gun to dry it and it flattened right out. DO NOT PANIC IF IT CURLS. If you don’t have a heat gun, you can use a hair dryer. Then I used my Walnut Stain distress ink and my blending tool to ink the edges of both pieces of paper and the tree. Then I got out my sewing machine, which I hadn’t used in more than three years. Thankfully, it worked with little effort! I measured one centimeter from the edge, and marked it with a pencil. I connected all the dots, so I had a line to trace while sewing it. (I tried hand sewing, it was miserable.) Then I put a button at the top of the tree, adhered the tree to the card, and applied a thin layer of glossy accents on top of the tree to ‘lock’ the Perfect Pearls in place. Also to, make it pretty of course! (This photo was taken before the tree dried, however, glossy accents does dry clear.) Here are a few pictures of the finished product. I got the “Merry Christmas” sentiment from Cloud 9. The ribbon is from JoAnn Fabrics. The measurements of the card are, 4.5X4.5 and the inside layer of is cut at 3.5X3.5.