Santa’s Stable – Crafty Individuals

My Christmas cards are now well under way and I've made this stand up cabinet card, mind you I still have most of them to write and get in the post.  The stamp set is CI 396 and I love the Santa and angel painted in the sepia tones. I did this with distress inks and a water brush. My youngest grandaughter looked like this for her Christmas nativity play this morning, with a long dress, wings and tinsel in her hair. I so love this time of year but I really miss being in school and sharing the build up to the big day with the children.

Now for making the cabinet card. I looked on the internet for cabinet card designs but most of them were just rectangular and I have the Tim Holtz vintage cabinet card die but I knew it would be too small, but I am into extending dies where I can, so I took a piece of mountboard, and die-cut just the top part. Using a ruler and pencil I drew lines to extend both the sides and length, they’re straight lines so it was very easy to do. I used my rotary trimmer and scissors to cut the shape out and hey presto I had the size I wanted to fit my image.

Of course there were cut lines still showing but covering the front and back with papers hid those and gave the shape it’s strength back. I glued the frame onto the papers and cut round the shape. I didn’t worry too much about neat edges as I knew I was going to sand them down.

Whilst in preparation mode I also cut a piece of normal 300 gm card and covered it on both sides with the same snowflake backing paper as the cabinet card and die-cut Tim’s small easel.

Then I was ready to do the background for the image and as Tim says it’s just a background, I used CI  017 text stamp with walnut stain distress ink and that was it simple. I knew it needed to be quite plain as the stars and images needed to take centre stage.

I had just bought a bag of stars made from wood, so I chose one, dabbed it with picket fence distress paint and sprinkled both gold and silver glamour dust over it. The small stars are die-cut and given the same treatment.

To give some dimension I popped this little angel up on foam pads and tucked a small glittered tree behind her.

The base has been cut with die-cut festive greenery and red berries with some silver bauble berries. It finished it off quite nicely.

I hope your preparations are going well.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

hugs Brenda xxx