Tissue Paper Suncatchers

Our front door has three funny little windows. These windows face due east and let the very bright morning light shine straight down our hallway into the master bedroom. This is quite annoying to me, so I have tried to find ways to cover those windows so that I'm not woken by the glaring light. I finally found an idea that is beautiful and effective! I did fall leaves for the season, but once December hits, I'll be making more of these with more Christmasy type shapes.

What you'll need:
-cardstock, two sheets per shape (front and back sides)
-tissue paper
-contact paper
-X-acto knives (or some sort of razor)
-rulers
-glue (not pictured)
-print-outs of the shape you want to make
-a cutting surface safe for razors

Cut your card stock down to the size you need. Or just cut it in a pretty shape if you're just hanging these in the window (not filling a specific space).

Tape your shape to cut onto the cardstock. I found it easiest to tape two sheets of cardstock together and cut both sheets at once.

As you can maybe see, the second layer of cardstock was only scored by my brand new x-acto knife. I had to go back over the lines on the second sheet, but it was much easier than starting fresh each time.

Both layers are cut out! They aren't perfect, but they're certainly close enough.

I took the two layers of cardstock apart and put 4 layers of tissue paper down.

I ran a glue stick along all the edges to help secure the tissue paper. I also added some dabs of glue between the layers of tissue paper to help keep it together. However, you probably want to leave one layer of tissue paper unglued until the last minute so that you can easily align the cut-outs.

I put the second cardstock cut-out on the back and held the whole thing up to the light to make sure they were aligned. This was a bit difficult because of the glue.

Next, I cut my contact paper out to the right size and laid it out.

I put my cardstock cut-out onto it, flattened it down, then did the other side.

There were a few wrinkles, but that was just fine for the leaves.

Then I checked my fit in the window and trimmed the sides a bit. It really frustrated me that the tissue paper shows through the cardstock. Next time I will make sure that the tissue paper is the full size of the cardstock so that you can't see the edges like you can in this picture.

Otherwise, I love how these turned out! Here they are at night...

And in the morning! So much better than the ugly construction paper I had up there before. :)

~Regina

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