Festive Friday Blog Hop

Welcome to the Festive Friday Blog Hop hosted by Terri Sproul! You should have arrived here from:  Brenda’s blog

I’m really excited to have joined the Festive Friday blog hop for 2012.  I get so busy around the holidays that I never seem to find the time to get my Christmas cards finished.  I was even lamenting to my daughter this year that I would just purchase some and send them out but people expect me to be “crafty” and would likely give me a hard time about not making my own.  Instead, I didn’t send out any.  So, this is my attempt to circumvent that problem for Christmas 2012.  Every 2nd and 4th Friday of the month, we’ll be sharing our Christmas cards and hopefully, inspiring you with our ideas!

sigh…does anyone else see one of my hairs there in this picture?  Guess I need to look a little closer next time!!

I began with a piece of bright blue cardstock folded into a 4 by 6 inch card.  I cut a piece of silver metallic tape – it’s not the duct tape that most people would think of but it IS used in duct and furnace work.  I always keep a roll of this stuff on hand because there are just so many great ways to use it!

Dang it…that hair is really annoying me.

I began by embossing star shapes into the metal tape.  That’s one of the fun things you can do with it – it accepts embossing very well!  I wanted a subtle pattern of stars in the background.  This tape has a paper backing that you peel off to reveal the adhesive.  I stuck it onto the card base and then used some scrap pieces of corrugated cardboard and cut more stars out of it to glue on top.  I added some little rhinestone stars (from a big multi pack of embellishments I got at Dollarama dollar store), letting a few of them overlap onto the blue background.  As you can see in the picture below, I added a touch of silver to the cardboard stars by highlighting the ridges with some silver Amaco Rub n Buff.

I made a white star out of Amaco Cloud Clay.  I used a star shaped cookie cutter to cut it out and then pressed a star shaped cookie stamp into it to “emboss” it.  I let this dry overnight.  This is an ornament that the recipient can remove from the card and use as a tree decoration so that they receive a little gift along with a card.  I added a little round white tag with silver metal trim and two little star charms (also from the Dollarama pack) to the ornament with a blue metallic string.  The tag allows me to personalize this with the name of the recipient.  I poked a small hole in the card using my Tonic pokey stabby thingie (also known as a piercing tool) and drew the string through it to secure the ornament inside the card.

The sentiment on the inside of the card is:  Love came down at Christmas.  Love all lovely, love divine.  Love was born at Christmas.  Stars and angels gave the sign. ~ Christina Rossetti

Your next stop is Robin’s Nest  Full list of participants is below! Have fun hopping!