Upcycling for Christmas

Out of the 'shop bought' Christmas cards we've received in recent years, I've kept quite a few that seemed to have potential for upcycling. There was one square card which I kept looking at - a plain black background with a pretty printed wreath of holly, white flowers and some red glitter - with a lovely die cut 'Noel' sitting in the centre, popped up on a dimensional sticky pad.

However, for ages I really couldn't think of how to upcycle the card other than slapping the whole square front onto a slightly larger square card - which wasn't gonna be true upcycling IMHO. Then, when I spotted Hazel's Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge this week was to use festive trees or greenery on a card (a little or a lot), out came said box of cards to upcycle and once again I pondered over that black square card. Bingo! Sudden thought and off I went - and this was the end result - a rocker card:

I used:

- the card front, after I'd carefully removed the 'Noel' with its sticky pad backing and put it to one side - because I was going to use the Cuttlebug on the card front and didn't want to squish it

- out came the set of Tonic Studio's 'Circle Layering' dies - more about those wonderful dies below this 'how I made the card burble'

- selected a circle die just the right size for cutting out the wreath from the upcycled card, plus the next two sizes up - so three dies in total

- die cut the wreath and set it aside

- using the next size up, die cut a red satin mirri card circle and also a circle of 300gsm white card stock - set those aside

- using the largest die, cut a circle from the 300gsm white card stock - and left it in the die. This was because I was using this largest circle of card for the rocker base and, yet another great thing with these Tonic Studio dies, they have a little notch at each 'quarter hour' of the die for precision. So, I marked the card at opposite sides using a pencil, removed the piece of card from the die - then lined the pencil lines up on my Hougie board and scored down from one mark to another. rubbed out the pencil marks and (with heart in mouth) folded down the score line to form a half circle. Result! A perfectly lined up rocker base - yay!

- so then it was just a matter of assembling the whole card (using Collall glue for some 'wiggle' time) by sticking the circular wreath to the red die cut circle. Then backed that red circle with the piece of white card I'd cut at the same time - this was so that the back of the card looked matched to the rocker part 'cos the reverse of the red satin mirri wasn't a crisp white

- lined up and stuck the complete card front to the folded rocker

- added the word 'Noel' back into the centre of the wreath, using a fresh strip of sticky pad

Back to the Tonic Studio's set of circular dies, it's absolutely brilliant! As the name suggests, it consists of circular dies - but the fabulous part is that there are 14 dies in the set ranging from 14cm down to 2.5cm and they come on a magnetic sheet within a hole punched pouch (ideal for popping in the front of my 'frame dies' file). I just looked online and there's a great offer over at Amazon.co.uk at £14.72 with free delivery, a saving of 36% (I know I paid much more than that price for the set I bought a while back). The largest die still fits my Cuttlebug fine yet is big enough to cut a circular card - and although the blurb says the dies will cut up to 240gsm card stock, I used 300gsm white card stock and it cut with no problem at all. One of my all time favourite everyday die sets for sure - even though I already had a Spellbinder Nestabilities set.

So, this card is for Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge 246, where it's 'Festive trees or greenery,' and also Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra for September - where it's always 'Anything goes'.

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