Wednesday

Picture: 1. Martha Stewart
2-3. Isa Form

Anyone still awake wrapping presents? Try out these print out gift tags from Martha Stewart and Isa Form.

Tuesday

Pictures:Marloe de Vries

This is a cute nativity set available for print out. You can choose if you want to use the colored figures above or color your own.

Tuesday

Here is the directions if you want to fold a Christmas tree.

Monday

Source: The happy home blog
via The style files
directions through here

Monday

1. Altitude memo block from Upon a fold
2. loop wrapping paper & prints
3-4. retro baloon card from Upon a fold
5. loop wrapping paper & prints
6. Freestyle stitching postcard from Upon a fold
7-8. wedding save the date baloon invitation

Friday

1. SOFTSERVEGIRL 2. How about Orange
Pictures are also linked to their sources.

Check out this cute DIY mini garland birthday card at How about Orange. And I just had to share this amazing barbie installation. I like decorating that has a sense of humor to it. I don't think Barbie would be too popular with the boys at home though. For the people that are not so brave it would be perfect in a Children's room wouldn't it?

Saturday

I give you the Stephen King star garland. One of his paperback novels (translated into French) has been lying around for a while at work looking for a new owner. Now it got sacrificed for a good cause. I made two identical stars like these and put them together with scotch tape. Then I hang them up with yarn. I don't have so much storage in my small apartment so I can't have a lot of Christmas decorations lying around.
I bougt the blackboard and the whiteboard weekly planner you can see in the background in Sweden by the way. It was in our 60kg of luggage.

Tuesday

1-2 royalbuffet on Etsy
3. KristinaMarie on Etsy
4. Carlos N. Molina - Paper Art
Pictures lead to their owners.

Saturday

Picture credits: 1 & 5. lemon drop studio
2. valeasc 3. ofpaperandthread
4.nchenga 6-7. super_ziper 8.. meghan-solo
Pictures are clickable.

I go on holiday tomorrow so I spent last night making our Christmas card. Being a parent you are supposed to send your family and poor friends that don't have kids a cute family picture. You could go to a professional studio and pay a fortune. If you have good equipment like we do you could set all the lights up and try to make your kid look adorable at home. Then you end up with 199 pictures of your kid crying, running away in fear or picking his nose and that one pic that's tolerable if you don't look too closely. If you do take the pics yourself it's a good idea to use the ones you don't choose for your Christmas card as gift tags. We've done that for the last few years. The pictures are often very funny and the kids in the family have been fighting over them. Everyone got a different picture on their present of us looking extremely stupid.

This year we've been taking a lot of pictures for friends and weren't up to going through the whole process again so I used a couple of pictures we took at IKEA. To begin with they had good lightning in the store. The Christmas decorations were up early. And there was a display kids setup with a Christmas sign in the background and small red furniture where my son happened to sit down to give the KLAPPAR tiger coffee. I then used the IKEA price tag (that we took a picture of to remember on which shelf the table was located) to write the card message. I might show the result when I've sent them. But to get to the point I think that you don't have to make so much of an effort or pay loads of money to make something personal.

*
Last

year I
I bought the
cards and made
the message look like
a Christmas tree inside the
card.

Wednesday

It would be really cute to cut these trees in half and use them for a pop-up Christmas tree card. I'd love to see the result if anyone tries it out. This is really easy. Anyone could do this. Don't be scared off by all the steps. I used as much as 4 pictures to show one step from different angles.

1. Start with a square piece of paper or post it note. I use a two colored paper. It's the green side that will show in the end.

2. Fold it once creating a triangle.

3. Unfold.

4. Fold it the other way creating another triangle.

5. Unfold and flip over.

6. Fold it in the middle creating a green rectangle.

7. Unfold

8. Fold it the other way creating another green rectangle. As you can see on the picture it opens up slightly in the middle. You now push from both sides to make it open up completely creating something 9. that looks like a 4 point star. There are four pictures of the result 9. from different angles.

10. Put the star down like this picture shows

11. Pick up the first flap, like turning the next page of a book and push the flap down creating a sharp fold 12.

13. Repeat the last step 11. four times. I show the result in two pics that are both numbered 13.

14. You now want to create a tree that will stand on it's own like in the picture 17. To make that happen you have to fold away the 4 small triangles that are sticking out. It's easy to first fold them (4 times) like I show in 14. and then open the tree up 15. and reverse the folds 16.

18. Put the tree down and make 5 small cuts from each side. Try not to make the different layers shift while you cut. It's easier if you distribute the layers (or branches so to speak of the tree) so that you have 4 on each side. When you cut you should aim at making the cut end half way in towards the middle of the tree. If you imagine a vertical line where the tree stem would have been (if this would have been a real tree) you cut half the distance from each side, making the upper cuts shorter and the lower cuts where the tree is wider longer.

19. 20. You now fold little triangles like I show in these pics. And the tree is finished. If you want to save time and cut your tree in half for a pop-up card you do this before folding these little triangles in the last step.