Christmas Banner - My Creative Scrapbook LE kit

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas in our home. The kids are off school, we no longer need to adhere to a morning schedule to get everyone up and out of the house (a gift in and of itself!), I'm being serenaded with French Christmas songs sung at the top of his lungs by my 5 year old, and the house smells like fir thanks to our glorious 8 foot Noble fir tree, with a counterpoint of orange blossoms thanks to the little orange tree that is wintering inside.

I think I've mentioned before that I am rubbish at getting good photos of the family at Christmas, being so caught up in the festivities myself, but fortunately I love nothing more than making altered items and off-the-page projects for Christmas. When I saw the 12x12 Prima Sweet Peppermint paper stack in this month's My Creative Scrapbook Limited Edition kit my heart gave a flutter - enough paper to layer and make large-format projects to my heart's content!

The fireplace insert in our chimney is ugly; installed by the previous owners, it doesn't actually fit the opening, sticking out a good 3 inches, with tufts of insulation stuffed into the cracks and peeking over the top. One of these years we will replace it, but in the meantime I was on a chimney beautification mission, and decided to use the kit contents to make a banner to help draw attention away from the eyesore.

For my banner pieces I took a shortcut, tracing one of the Julie Nutting banner pieces from her tag pad onto the papers and cutting them out. I cut a total of 10 banner pieces out of patterned paper, and an extra 5 out of white cardstock to place between the layers. I trimmed an inch off the top edge of the 5 banner pieces that were to be the top layer of each piece, and about 3/4 of an inch off of the white cardstock pieces. I edged the white pieces with gold leafing pen for some definition.

To create the edges of the banner pieces, I punched 2 inch strips of patterned paper left over from cutting out the banner pieces.

Ribbon detailing was added to each piece using a variety of trims included in the kit. I punched two holes in the top of the banner to thread these through and fastened them to the back of the banner piece.

I wanted a big textural element to ground each of the clusters, and added corrugated cardboard to provide a base for each letter and its associated elements. Each torn corrugated cardboard strip was winterized by adding artificial snow and glitter.

I didn't have letters big enough for the banner pieces. To create bigger letters, I chose a font I liked and made it bold, then printed it out onto computer paper, and cut them out, then traced them onto chipboard (I traced them upside down onto the backside to prevent any ink marks showing on the final product) and fussy cut those out. I then coated them in embossing ink and heat embossed them with several layers of gold embossing powder.

Each of the banner pieces was then adorned using flowers and chipboard pieces from the kit.

To string up the banner pieces, I created paper loops on the back of each banner with scraps leftover from the previous steps. Rather than having to string through the mess of twine and raffia, I adhered one end of each paper strip to the back, lay the mass of twine on top, and folded it over and secured the other end.

Here's a closeup of the banner on my mantle.

If you haven't picked up your December Limited Edition kit yet, be sure to head over to the My Creative Scrapbook store. If you aren't yet following the My Creative Scrapbook blog, be sure to check it out and become a follower for loads of inspiration from the design team.

Wishing you and yours all the magic of the Christmas season, and all the best for a healthy, happy 2017.
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