Calico Craft Parts: A Quick Christmas Card, Some Ornaments and Festive Home Decor

Hi, servus and I hope you're in the middle of enjoying the advent season (well, at least as much as possible this year)!

Those who know me, know that I am not much of a Christmas crafting girl - as much as I love Christmas with decorating our tree and putting up candles and lights here and there! When it comes to creating cards or other Christmas related projects, I really start to struggle. I loved decorating presents when I was younger, but obviously habits change during a lifetime...and right now I am not only struggling with heavy side effects from a new medication (I won't bore you with details here, but heavily shaking hands definitely are not helpful either), but we're also furnishing the house we've recently bought (in our favourite Austrian lake district) - so it will be a bit of struggle to reconcile Christmas preparations and celebrations with planning and putting up furniture (and then still be relaxed enough on Christmas Eve to enjoy the festivities with the family)...

...but with the help of some of the lovely Christmas themed Calico Craft Parts even I managed to come up with something festive - which definitely helped put me in Christmas mood!

I've created a card, a dome with a nativity scene and lit with tiny lights and also two ornaments for our tree (or to hang on Christmas presents alongside a little tag)!

Calico Craft Parts used:

- Christmas Nativity Scene MDF Wood Shape - Style 1

- Trio of Winter Fir Trees MDF - Wood Shape

- Snowflake Christmas Tree - MDF Lace Cut Bauble

- Tractor Trailer & Christmas Tree - MDF Wood Shape

- Mistletoe Branch - MDF Wood Shape

I worked on all projects simultaneously and started with spraying all the chosen craft parts with DecoArt white Shimmer Mister.

While the parts were set aside to dry, I unboxed the dome kit - a cheap DIY Christmas dome kit that comes with tiny lights, "snow" in a little plastic bag, a plastic dome and MDF base and some pre-cut Balsa wood pieces that I replaced with the Calico Craft Parts Nativity Scene and Fir Tree Trio.

The picture below shows how I've cut the base plate from the kit into three sections. These were meant to work as stands for the nativity scene and tree trio (I just glued the craft parts between the base plate parts and all of this using matte Decou-Page to the MDF base of the dome kit - this way the wood shapes are kept upright and in place).

While that was set aside to dry, I finished my Christmas card: I have a box of previously die cut or left over sentiments and picked the "seasons greetings" quote for my rural themed card with the tractor and its trailer with the tree. I use an old small detail brush and diluted Decou-Page to glue tiny die cuts into place. The MDF wood shape was glued on with Decou-Page directly from the bottle and I put a heavy weight on top during drying time to make sure all the parts of the wood shape got firmly glued to the Kraft card.

Time to turn the dome upside down, fill it with the snow from the little bag and insert the tiny lights!

The base had gotten a layer of DecoArt Chalky Finish paint "lace" before - but there was enough snow to neatly cover the whole base around the trees.

Last thing to do was to fix little ribbons to the two ornaments as hanging devices - done!

A quick card, two even quicker ornaments and a nostalgic nativity scene in a lit dome! The slight shimmer from the white Shimmer Mister added beautifully to the festive look of the ornaments and the nativity scene!