A Sweet Christmas Inspiration | Christmas Lanterns and Cards with Anna
Sep 05, 2018
Hello crafty friends. My name is Anna and I am so happy I can be a guest designer with awesome "A Sweet Christmas" collection by Sharyn Sowell. If you want to know me better, you can visit my blog or Instagram. I also have a YouTube channel, where I post a lot of video tutorials.
If you follow me on social media, you may noticed that I am not a cardmaker. I love making layouts and OTP projects and I always try to find some new ways to use dies in my designs. This time I was much inspired by the dies that look like silhouettes. I thought they would look good casting shadows as a part of something like lantern. So I decided to make one (or two).
I like working in pairs so I made two very similar lanterns using red and craft cardstock. Those are really fast and easy projects and you don’t need fancy tools to make them. This is how they look in a daylight.
I started with cutting 12*12 paper sheet in four even parts. I used a scoring board to add a scoring line on one of the edges. Thanks to that I could connect all four pieces into a lantern. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible and easy to fold, so the storage won’t be a problem.
I cut out the rectangle squares in each side of the lantern and backed it with a piece of vellum. Now all we need is to embellish our project. Adding silhouettes to each side turned ordinary lanterns into cosy Christmas decors. If you want to display it during the day, it will need a little bit of embellishing. I added some bits and pieces on one side to make it look more festive.
If you want to follow my process and make your own lanterns, I have a process video for you.
After I made my lanterns, I got few ideas for fast and simple cards using the same dies. I grabbed some papers in classical Christmas color palette – green and red – and created three similar cards. Each of them displays different die but they all look like a set.
I like the color and texture of craft paper and I think it goes well with traditional Christmas colors. That’s why I used it to cut out my silhouettes. I also highlighted the edges using ink dabber and brown ink.
Adding ribbon to the monochromatic background creates focal point and helps grounding the scene, so it doesn’t look like it’s flying in the air.
Different sizes of dies require different shapes of cards. That’s why each of my cards has different dimensions.
12*12 cardstock: red, craft, green; Crate Paper Falala 12*12 papers and stickers; Pinkfresh Studio December Days stickers and ephemera pieces; vellum; die cutting machine; Distress Ink Brushed Corduroy; ink dabber; natural twine; ribbons; 3D foam squares;
That’s it all for today. I will be back here two more times with new inspirations created with "A sweet Christmas" collection and I hope you will join me.
Thank you for stopping by.
Anna
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