I love a handmade Christmas and this piece would make a wonderful gift for anyone at this special time of year or could be placed in the entrance hall to welcome people into your home. It is deceptively easy to make!
The make is created on a 12" deep canvas which was painted in a metallic brown colour so that the sides that would be visible blended into the natural tones of the products used. I took a single sheet of paper from the Home for the Holidays collection and carefully measured to create a frame the width of the canvas surround. The outer piece was then turned over and adhered to the frame and the central square piece placed into the recess of the canvas.
I did spent a little time fussy cutting flowers and berries from the collectables set that goes with the papers before adding lots of natural elements. I knew I had to use lots of pine cones some of which had been gifted to me by Marisol when at the September retreat - she had specially gone up the mountains close to her home in Andorra to collect small ones and I wanted to really do them justice. I also added some smaller cones from the shop.
I placed the bigger pine cones in place at the bottom of the frame and then tucked in the fussy cut floral elements. Then I filled in gaps with moss before adding in the smaller cones and some red magnolia flowers. To add more texture I tucked in Holly Leaves and added berries taken from the Twigs with Buds.
For the top corners I used the same elements but also added in some chipboard pieces - the exact one is no longer available but two of these broken up would work just as well.
I have had the 3D room scene kit in my stash for a while and decided that the Carol of Elves papers would work perfectly with it - in addition to the kit with the co-ordinating shabby ribbon you will also need a sheet of 05, 03 and 01 along with the chipboard ladder with ornaments.
The eagle eyed will notice that I have placed my window to the back of the scene rather than the side so its upto you which you prefer as teh two pieces with slots in will fit in either direction. BEFORE making the chipboard room up if you want to cover the pieces with paper you decorate the one with the window first - starting with the side that is going to be faceing outside, this way you can cut out the paper for the window panes and also the slots for the window box. Then cover the inside avoiding gluing down at the end that has to but up to the second panel and then cut out just the window pane areas.
I constructed the ladder adding only two of the presents to the shelves and used off cuts of striped paper to decorate them. I took a cotton reel and covered it with more paper and then draped over a piece of lace to resembly a table cloth and then adhered a Christmas Tree on top of it before sitting it into the corner. I then added lace curtains to the windows. The ladder was then placed at an angle between the window and corner tree.
The standing elves were fussy cut out from paper. To allow them to stand I cut out the presents from one of the sheets and added a 1 to 2 cm score line - the bigger piece was adhere to the elves and the smaller one to the base of the box. I also added two more trees as I felt the dioramma needed something more.
My parcels were made by covering 2cm and 1cm wooden beads with decorative papers and then tied with red cotton twine. Before adhering these inplace along with the remaining parcel from the ladder kit I chose my sentiment (it acts like a rug) - there are no sentiments in the paper pack so I chose one that I felt worked well from the Christmas Vibes 12 x 12 papers.
To decorate the window box I used another sentiment from the Christmas Vibes collection and then tucked in holly leaves and added berries.
My next step was to decorate the box that goes into the base. BE CAREFUL it is not square and only fits in in one direction so identify this before adding the panel and draw pull to the box itself. Inside the box I have placed a this way that way album.
Essentially this is a concertina album tied at both sides so it opens one way when you untie one side and the other if you untie the other side. To constuct this I covered 13cm square pieces of greyboard with decorative papers. To make the pages I then cut stips of A4 card 5" high and scored at 5 and 10" leaving a short flap which was then used to attatch this piece to a second cut the same way. Finally a 5" high by 10" long piece of card scored at 5" was added. The first and last of these were then attatched to the inside of the album covers before decorating with decorative papers and white photomats. Before adding decorations to the album I took a piece of the shabby ribbon from the kit and divided it into 4 before attatching two pieces to the front and two to the back cover pieces securing them in place with decorative papers.
