Rejoice!

Last week, panic began to set in about achieving my Christmas card making target in time. I may still fall back on a few shop bought cards but whilst rootling through a box of ancient Christmas toppers etc. - I came across some mulberry paper poinsettia flowers in a little packet. They needed to be layered up though, so were put aside as a 'possible'.

And then, rootling a bit further in the same box, I came across some gold 'curled hunting horn' die cuts - literally dating back to many years ago! This was long before I had a die cutting machine, in fact back then I'm not sure if I'd even heard of being able to cut your own dies!

They were sold by Kirsty Wiseman when she owned 'Dies to Die For' before Tracey took over - and at the time I bought quite a variety of ready cut dies from Kirsty (the 'Three Wise Men' silhouettes were fabulous). And so, this card, along with four other ones exactly the same, was born:

I used:

- 4" x 4" square white card blank

- then die cut a smaller square of white card, using a die from The Works 'Stitched Squares' die set 

- cut a square piece of dark green card, just a little bigger than the die cut white square

- assembled the flowers with the green leaves behind using Collall All Purpose glue and the last of a Papermania's 'petal pouch' called 'A Silent Night'. Looking at the small print on the packet. the green leaves are meant to be holly leaves - hey, ho (or should that be 'tally ho? - snigger)

- now I could work out the placement of the sentiment before sticking everything down, using the Misti, Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and a stamp from the Paper Smooches 'Christmas Sampler' set

- glued the green layer to the back of the white 'stitched layer' and popped them onto the card front

- added the gold die cut hunting horn (it even came with some stitched detail - all those years ago) using Collall glue in a Woodware fine tipped applicator

- topped the horn with the flower and leaves

- finished off by adding three gold satin finish Josy Rose nail heads to the centre of the flower

I spent ages looking online to see which way up a hunting horn would be displayed (as opposed to held when giving a good old 'toot'). Looked like it doesn't matter so I went with how I thought suited adding the sentiment and the flower.