Papercraft Christmas Cards

Forgive the terrible iPad photo (see my shadow?), this is the only photo I took of our 2012 masterpieces. If I'd had a blog at that time, I would have felt justified in taking many more photos, with my nice camera.

We had a lot of fun making these cards.

I bought these supplies:
1. Set of blank cards with envelopes
2. Pack of A4 Christmas papers
3. Bottle of PVC glue
4. Tub of red glitter
5. Scraps of yarn
6. Scraps of cardboard
7. Scraps of aluminium foil
8. Letter stamp set and ink pad (red)
9. Confetti shapes

There are loads of supplies that you probably already have around the house: ribbon, wrapping paper, beads, sequins and cotton wool would all be great additions to the supplies above.

Then we set to work cutting and sticking. I got some inspiration from papercraft websites (I'm afraid I forget which). The tree and the squares definitely did not spring from my own imagination. Here's a rundown of each card:

Red Star, Noel
I started with the red star, Noel card. I drew the outline in pencil on the card, then went over the line with glue. Then I sprinkled the glitter all over the entire card and poured it away (saving for later, of course) to reveal the glitter stuck to the glue. Very simple but very effective.

Present
Next up, I tackled the present. Layering the papers is a great way to get a better looking finish on the cards. This is two rectangles of complimenting papers, slightly different sizes. The smaller one is stuck on top of the larger one. More glitter-over-glue makes the ribbon and bow.

Snowflake
The kids really enjoyed making snowflakes. We folded sheets of paper in half, and half again, then cut sections away, leaving the centre point intact. When you unfold it, you have a magic snowflake. For contrast, I stuck it over a large red section. These would be great to make out of aluminium foil and stick on a turquoise or blue background. Maybe this year, we will do all foil shapes.

Baubles
Now we're getting on to my favourites. These looked great. I used different circles I had around the house: a glass, inside of a sticky tape roll; to cut different size circles from the papers. I glued a line of scrap red yarn for the string and made a glitter bow on top. Buying a set of papers, rather than individual sheets was perfect for this because I could use the same design in different colourways and keep the whole thing looking co-ordinated.

Fireplace
This was really fun. We cut out a tiny stocking shape, plus a large rectangle for the background and two strips for the sides. Then I pulled apart the layers of a piece of corrugated cardboard for the mantlepiece. I peeled the three layers of cardboard away from each other and used the flat side but stuck it wrong side out so you could see the lines where the glue was. I fancied it looked like a grain in the wood.

Christmas Trees
These were made from strips of paper laid in rows with the edges trimmed to make a triangle shape. Cardboard was the perfect tree trunk and I cut a scrap of foil into a star shape for the top of the tree.

Squares
This was a total scrap-buster but looked really special. Some of the papers had quite juvenile pictures on them and I didn't want to use them in other cards, but they worked really well here. I cut out some of the stuffed animal pictures, plus a tiny star, tree and circles. Then arranged them on the tiny squares. Some of the squares I left without a shape, if they already had pictures on them. There are loads of variations that you could do with this basic layout and once all the tiny pieces are nicely cut and arranged side by side, it makes a really cute card.

We had to mark our handiwork as handmade so I bought a set of letter stamps and a red inkpad. We arranged the letters to say "Made by Cathy and E..." and stamped this on the back of each card. I didn't get a picture but it looked really cute.

I weighed all the cards down under some heavy books for a few days (the paper ones, not the glitter) because they were curling up quite a bit. I think it worked - you'll have to ask my family in Australia how they looked on arrival.

The final touch was confetti inside the cards and we also glued one snowflake shaped confetti to the outside of the envelope.