Let’s Celebrate at AVJ

Nikki is hosting our ‘Let’s Celebrate’ challenge which will take us up to Christmas, but of course with a wide open title like this you could be choosing one of a number of different things to celebrate.

You can make something to celebrate Christmas if you wish but lets not forget about those December birthdays, anniversaries, Hanukkah and New Years. It may be fun to focus on celebrations other than Christmas, it's up to you.

At this time of the year Christmas is very special to us as a family and we celebrate the season in a number of ways, one of which is giving gifts. If your children are grown up like mine then these days they don’t seem to want for much and they enjoy receiving gifts of money or tokens. This year I decided to make my own gift card holders.

Cut two pieces of card one 10 cm wide  x 18cm tall and one 14 cm wide x 6 1/2 cm tall.  Create a distressed background with stains and the wrinkle free technique. Repeat on the other side of the larger piece.

Take the larger piece and score at 5 cm on one side of the longest edge and 6 1/2 cm on the other end. Punch a semicircle or semi oval on the 5 cm end.

Take the small piece and score at 2cm on both ends of the longest side. (Here beware the thickness of the card, you might need to score at 21mm so that this wraps around the larger piece properly). Cut out a 2cm square on two of the corners and a fraction off the bottom diagonally so that the flap will fit inside neatly.

Work out which bits of the card holder are going to be upright and stamp randomly, I used Tim’s music score and text from Letter to Santa and Festive Sounds stamp sets with coffee archival ink.. Use a sticky note to mask off any section that you don’t want to stamp over. Round the corners of the large piece as shown and ink the edges before we adhere anything together.

Cut two pieces of ribbon/seam binding, I cut mine 30 cm and 25 cms long and sandwich it between the top and bottom layer when you adhere them together.

On the inside I stamped a greeting….

… and on the outside I added some glossy holly stamping using Tim’s technique that he used on on Tag 10 in 2011. I used Mini Holidays 2 and 4 for the holly stamps. I also cut and added the Noel die-cut from the Holiday Words – Script thinlits dies.

The ribbon ties around the wallet and it’s all ready to hold that gift card for that someone special.

I know it’s a big rush now to get everything sorted, decorating, cooking, buying and wrapping presents, but if you find yourself with some crafty time then we hope you will join us on our ‘Lets Celebrate’ journey.

Take care.

hugs Brenda xxx