Silhouette Nativity Cut-out

First off, the word silhouette is just about impossible to spell.  Thank goodness for spell-checkers! :)

I took part in a home-made ornament exchange in one of my online forums.  The lady to whom I was to send the ornament gave me quite the challenge: she doesn't have a tree, so it needed to be something that could stand alone.  She also requested something religious.

After much searching, I ran across this cross-stitching pattern:

Now, since this is a sample picture of a cross-stitching pattern that's for sale on a website (edit: it is no longer for sale and the image had disappeared. I have re-added it but it's pretty small), it's not something anyone can use for selling anything, but I assume it's OK to make some pretty decorations, so here we go.


If that one looks a bit crazy to do, here's another nice one that's similar.

I printed off the sample picture and liked it at its full size, so I taped it down to my fore-ground paper and started cutting. (Sorry about the picture, I tried turning it to a profile orientation and the angle made me dizzy, so I left it like this.)

Even with a new exacto knife blade, I ended up going over most of the cuts twice. The palm tree fronds were killers...Can you tell I haven't actually done anything like this before? :)

After getting it all cut out, I mounted it with dabs of glue onto my background paper and framed it in an 8x10 frame.  Oh, and I added the "Noel" down at the bottom (rather than doing the rays of light) because it definitely need something there.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out and my friend loved it!

However, I likely won't be doing something quite like this in the near future, or at least not as intense as this one. It took over a week for the tip of my pointer finger to get the feeling back in it!

~Regina