Monday 1 December 2014

Vicar's Craft Corner: the Festive Crafting Begins!

Advent is finally here! It is therefore, to my mind, the perfect time to crack out the Christmas crafts and get ready for what is my favourite time of year. When else can you legitimately put up a four foot sparkly pink reindeer in your living room? When else is eating a cake a day practically mandatory? When else is crafting more fun than when it involves gold and glitter? Ah, it really is the most wonderful time of the year!

This year I have started off the preparations with some card making. This was greatly enhanced by the purchase of a craft knife and cutting board. It turns out that using a knife is a whole lot easier to manage than trying to wield scissors to useful effect when making, well, basically anything. It only cost me a tenner which is making me wonder why I spent quite so much time last year messing about with the kitchen scissors....Live and learn....!

I have also recently purchased a set of alphabet printing blocks to go with the red, brown and black inks that I picked up for a reason I can't really remember a few years ago. Combined with some trusty PVA and some old scraps of paper and we have the recipe for card making success for very little money at all.

If you are on my Christmas list then I am afraid you are going to get a bit of a spoiler in this post. The design took me all of five minutes to sketch out but I quite like it. I wanted something that was detailed enough to make full use of the craft knife but not so that I was there sculpting the front of each card into the small hours. I do have a life you know.

I also wanted something that celebrates 'the reason for the season' and captures something of why Christmas is my favourite time of year. Something of the magic of God coming down to us, tiny and vulnerable, as a little baby and of the joy brought to the world in a setting that is so humble and ordinary.



I made the stable by making a template on a piece of card which I cut out with the craft knife. I used the template to draw the stable image onto the inside of the Christmas card. I then cut out the template and pushed out the shapes. I then cut a tiny piece of gold paper for the star which I stuck onto the inside of the card and then covered the whole cut out area with a square of black sparkly card.


So there we have it. Some very simple little Christmas cards that will hopefully bring some Christmas joy and have been great fun to make.

What are you crafting this Advent?


1 comment:

  1. ooh I am very pleased to have received one of these carefully crafted cards! It's sitting atop my mantel piece!

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