This year I decided to make some Christmas pictures for gifts for our parents and my siblings (and I ended up making one for us too). I started out with an idea I found online to cut out little pieces of different papers, then paint around a silhouette design to leave just the colored papers showing. My first attempt was a total failure, and I had to throw the entire canvas away. But then I figured out my mistake, and the second one turned out pretty nice, I think.
Lijah helping cut out the little pieces of paper
But it took a lot of time to paint it just right (I’m not much of a painter), so I altered my plan on the rest of them and came up with a more simple idea: paint the canvas, then use an exacto knife to cut out a Christmas silhouette on scrapbook paper (I had a lot of fun searching for scherenshnitte [paper cutting] patterns for this online, and I even altered a few patterns and got a little creative with some of them by the end), then you just use mod podge to cover the paint and the cut out paper on the canvas, and then spray a sealant on top and it’s a nice, simple wall hanging. I ended up making 7 of these little canvases, and was pretty pleased with the results overall.
(before the mod podge dried)
(I found that words are by far the hardest thing to cut out)
Then I was really getting into the paper cutting, so I ended up cutting out some small pieces that were all symbols of the nativity – a star, donkey, sheep, camel, and a manger with baby Jesus, and then mod podged them onto little wooden pieces to make ornaments for the boys and all the nieces and nephews. It took a little while (although I didn’t mind, because I really do enjoy doing the paper cutting), but ended up being really inexpensive and I think they turned out pretty cute [I was a little sad, though, that we found out that one of them ripped open in the mail and one ornament for one of the nephews was lost, but at least he’s just a baby so he didn’t know any better].
1 comment:
u r so talented
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