I've finally finished the family's Christmas cards. Hoorah!
They've been a very long time in the making.
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As part of my decluttering endeavours last year I came up with the idea of using the Monopoly houses to create Christmas ornaments. They were really fiddly and took a lot longer than I anticipated and I didn't finish them in time so I restarted them again this year.
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I made the ornaments by gluing the monopoly houses together in the shape of a Christmas tree. I also used some plastic counters from another game to form a snowflake.
Next I stuck the shapes onto mounting board I'd cut to size. I covered the backs with green crushed velvet so that they will look nice from all angles on the tree. I glued the hanging thread between the card and the houses.
The stars at the top of the trees I made from polymer clay and the letter tiles, which are my family's initials, are from a different upcycled game.
I used a piece of broken jewellery for the centre piece on the snowflake.
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To make the cards themselves I added tree shapes and a snowflake cut from gold glitter paper to black card. I backed the shapes with window blind samples and the trunks and messages are written on hand-dyed coffee paper. I did this so that once the ornaments are removed the cards will still look half decent.
It took me a while to work out how to attach the ornaments to the cards. In the end I settled on using gold thread and sewed them on in such a way that they can be removed easily to hang on the tree.
The final challenge was to get the cards into the envelopes as with the ornaments added they didn't fit. š So I had to dismantle the envelopes, put in the cards and then stick them back together with some Christmassy tape. Job done.
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It took me more than a year but I think it was worth it! š