So I’m cheating a little bit on this one. These actually aren’t finished yet. I’ve still got piles of paper pieces strewn all around my desk. I just couldn’t wait any longer! February will be here before I know it, and then there go all my big organizational plans.

For this year I’m making 120 cards, so it had to be made out of nothing but paper. Even adding one little brad starts adding up in a hurry when we’re talking about that many of them. This last Christmas I actually ran out. I didn’t count on making new friends throughout the year, so I found myself trying to choose between friends – who wouldn’t care that much, who keeps up with me on the blog, who would never forgive me for leaving them out? That’s the one downside with making your cards so far ahead of time – who knows what’s going to happen by the time Christmas rolls around again.

Without any further ado, Here’s What You’ll Need:

1 card exterior piece @ 6″ x 12″
1 card interior piece @ 6″ x 11 7/8″
3 pocket pieces
{ 1 @ 3 1/2″ x 2 1/2″ }
{ 2 @ 2 3/4″ x 2 1/2″ }
3 Tag pieces
{ 1 @ 3″ x 4″ }
{ 2 @ 2 1/4″ x 4″ }
2 Embellishment strips @ 4″ x 1″
1 Greeting Block @ 2 3/4″ x 2″
1 Cover Embellishment
3 Pocket Embellishments

Start by scoring the exterior piece just shy of 4″ from each edge. Then score the interior piece 3 15/16″ from each edge. These measurements try to take into account the fact that some space is taken up by the score fold itself, and it can be a little bit fiddly to line these two pieces up.

With your score lines complete, it’s time to sew the pockets on to the interior of the card. Sew one pocket centered inside each segment of the card, lined up close to the bottom. Make sure the wider card goes in the center segment. The pockets should all line up together, and all be the same 2 1/2″ height.

Fold both the interior and the exteriors on the fold lines, then line up the edges and staple together in the corner. Don’t waste your time trying to make the folds line up exactly right, it’s just not going to. There needs to be quite a bit of give between the inner and outer pieces so the card can both fold and open. Only put one staple in each corner. It will be plenty to hold it together, and anymore would restrict it too much.

If you’re making this card right before using it, you can decorate the tags here. Since I’ll be putting next year’s family pictures in here, I just stuck my naked tags inside the pockets to keep everything together.

If you haven’t done it yet, you can also decorate the pockets now. This was a stamp I carved out of a pink eraser after every other plan failed. I bought this green paper that turned out to be too thick to go through the printer, and I couldn’t find another stamp I liked, so I finally just grabbed the new pink eraser I bought in my attempts towards drawing and hacked into it. I stamped this little tree and cut it out by hand 360 times.

Glue on your Embellishment Strips, one on the inside flap of the card, and one on the cover.

Glue on your last remaining embellishments. I made the greeting block on the computer, and the tree was a cutout from the same paper I used for the interior of the card.

Just to make your life easier, here’s the greeting block card I made. Feel free to download and use for all your cards, but no other uses without emailing me first please.

So this may not be the least labor intensive card I ever came up with. It just might, in fact, be the very most amount of work I ever put into a greeting card. But I often find that in card making you have to make a choice between cost in labor and cost in materials, and with so very many cards to make, materials had to lose. You could make this card a whole lot easier just by using a sticker or other embellishment on the pockets and cover, but as it is I’ve designed a fancy card without using anything but paper, glue, and four staples. This year, a cheap but pretty card is worth all the fiddly cutting.

There are so many pieces of our past on this tree, photos throughout the years, ornaments I made during our first year together, Atti’s little footprints, but it was missing a piece of our future. Remember this project I promised would come back around? Now’s the time.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Some plain ornaments
alphabet stamps (a variety of sizes and styles works great)
Pigment ink
Embossing powder (a variety of colors really looks good)
a heat gun
your list of words

This is just regular old embossing, but here’s the rundown if you’ve never tried it before.

Stamp your highest priority word on the center of the ball with your largest stamps and pigment ink. The ink can be pretty slippery, so I’d suggest buying a few extra ornaments to practice on. I’d also suggest balancing as much of your hand as you can on the ball so that the only thing moving are your thumb and forefinger. This will make a really stable surface.

Pour embossing powder over the inked letters and shake the excess off inside something you can use to pour the powder back into the jar. A plain sheet of paper works just fine, but I love my fancy little tray with built in funnel I got in the beading aisle.

Heat the powder with the heat gun until it melts. Don’t hold the gun too close or else it could discolor the ball.

Keep going with your other goals, adding different colors of embossing powder. Since I was inspired by the wordle design, I used smaller stamp alphabets for the lower priority goals. This also helps to fit in some of those really long words.

I think this could be a really great way of capturing the changes in your family from year to year. As Atti grows up I might add balls that commemorate his favorite thing about that year, or a new years resolution.

As I’ve mentioned once or twice, I really only kept a few of the original ornaments for this tree. I have a big bag in my garage full of all kinds of messy purple stars and frayed hot pink temari knockoff balls I made after a particularly inspiring episode of Carol Duvall. I don’t really know what I’m going to do with those. It seems sad to just throw them out, but would someone at Goodwill really put them out on a shelf?

Anyway, today is Bear’s big fat fancy work party where I have to get dressed up and go on a boat with all his bosses while Atti goes off to play with Grandma and Aunt Mari, and before that I have to take my written final exam for Culinary school, so I’m going easy on myself and I’ll just show you these last two leftover ornaments that were deemed worthy of making the cut.

This ornament looks sporty to me, while still being all glam and blingy. I just took a styrofoam ball, poked a hole all the way through wide enough to thread a ribbon loop through, and then glued on row after row of bugle beads. To make this easier on myself, I threaded each and every one of those tiny beads onto a length of thread. Of course, I shudder to think about the time I spend doing this now that I know you can buy beads already threaded on a hank.

I love the big burst of color that these ornaments provide. Plus they’re super lightweight, so they’re great for a real tree where the branches are so flexible they droop with the big heavy ornaments.

All they are is a thin wire-edged ribbon, maybe 1/2″ or 3/4″ cut to 6″ lengths. Stack 12 of them up together and wire them together in the middle.

I cut the edges all fancy, and then I lined it with a little fabric paint. Both to add a little bling and to prevent things from fraying.

I hope you like all these simple little ornaments. I’m thrilled and kind of taken back by all the attention this little blog of mine is getting lately, and I hope you all stick around. It’s been tremendous fun to hear from all of you. It’s been so rewarding to put all this work into what I’m sharing and have you respond.

I’ll be back tomorrow with my favorite ornament creation of the year. Hopefully I can make it through this party in one piece and get back to work quickly.

The ideas behind this Family Traditions tree are pretty common sense. What are some objects that say family? Hearts, monograms, and of course, family photos. Bear also suggested links in a chain, so I think I’m going to incorporate that for next year. I’m still debating if I should do a full on chain garland, or individual lengths of chain and hang them just like all the other ornaments. But I’ll start thinking about that in January.

We added a whole bunch of new family photos this year to reflect the change in our family. I’ve shown you a couple of those already, so here’s the rest.

Lobo the cat and his boy caught in a tender moment.

It’s hard to tell because the tree branch is in the way and Atti’s head was so very very tiny, but this picture is a blown up copy of this picture.


Atti rocking out to his ipod.

These photos really continue a trend that I had started in the very beginning with these little frame ornaments.

If you look closely you can see all my hot glue threads and messy fabric bunches testifying to how far I’ve come in the past ten years. Bleck.

To make these I just took two 3″ square pieces of chipboard or super thin cardboard. My favorite place to get this is at Michael’s, Joann’s or some other big box craft store. You can find them underneath every stack of scrapbooking paper, and these stores never do anything with them. You can almost always walk away with a stack for free.

I cut a hole in the center of one piece large enough for a picture to show through, and then I covered both pieces with fabric using hot glue to secure it on the back.

I glued a piece of clear plastic to the backside. I used a piece of a page protector back then, now I think I might be tempted to skip this step. I glued my photo down behind this, and then I sandwiched both square pieces together with more hot glue, making sure to slide some ribbon in the middle for a hanger.

I was figuring this out as I went and right about here in the process I discovered that my creation looked like an unholy mess. Glue was dripping out the sides, there was a big gap made by bulky fabric corners, it was an eyesore. So I glued down a piece of ribbon all along that seam to hide all my mistakes.

Then of course I wanted to decorate the front, so I just hot glued those flat backed marbles to it.

Back when I made these the crafty world was in a very different place. Now there are so many gorgeous fabrics and paper and other assorted doodads on the market, this simple idea could really be turned into something fabulous with the right supplies.

In the back of my mind I’ve been wanting to redo this tree for years. But the first batch of ornaments took me so dang long, and I always had some other goal that needed attention, so year after year it went neglected.

This year I knew it was time to address this, so I had to come up with some extra extra cheap and quick ornaments. I bought a pack of scrapbook paper made by American Crafts (Who I LOVE. They’re a great company with gorgeous designs.) and searched the internet for every kind of paper ornament I could find.

These are all crazy easy. And you can’t get cheaper than paper, so they’re perfect for a “disposable” application like changing a color scheme year to year, or, like my friend who’s getting married on December 20th, decorating a winter wedding tree.

The globe ornament is an oldy but goody that I’ve seen everywhere from Carol Duvall to Martha Stewart and at a million different websites across the internet. Here’s Martha’s latest iteration.

The ornament made out of paper strips is pretty much instinctual. In fact, as I’ve been checking out the blogs of some of you commenters, I came across these exact ornaments, in the exact same American Craft paper pack. Sorry I can’t remember who’s it was, but I got quite a kick out of seeing it. I just cut a ton of paper strips to some random size that looked good to me, punched holes in both ends, and secured them with brads. I made sure to make the inside look pretty too, so I lined up the paper strips wrong sides together before I put the brads in.

The heart is the only paper ornament that can claim any originality.

Cut four strips of paper to 12″ by 1 1/2″, and four strips of paper 8″ by 1 1/2″. I think this looks best when you use four different papers so that you end up with different patterns on each surface of the heart. But for today we’ll just go with two.

Glue two 12″ strips back to back, the other two 12″ strips back to back and then both sets of 8″ strips back to back so that you’re left with four double sided strips with different patterns on both sides.

Line up all four strips to be even on one side. You have to arrange them so that when you bend them over in the next step, the patterns will all be in the right place. Put the 12″ strips right sides together (and by right sides I mean the side you want facing outside of the heart), then put one 8″ strip on each side with the right side of the 8″ strip facing the wrong side of the 12″ strip. This is one of those things that’s kind of hard to explain, but ridiculously easy in practice. You’ll see what I’m talking about as soon as you have the strips in your hands.

Bend the top end of each strip over to meet the bottom end where you’ve got everything all lined up together. See? There’s your heart. If you got any of your strips facing the wrong way, now’s your chance to fix them.

Secure the end with a couple staples. I covered the staple with another little paper strip, but you could also use ribbon, or just a pretty staple and leave it exposed.

I used a little glue to stick a hanger between the curves of the heart. This also had the added benefit of making the heart a little more sturdy.

I had planned to spend today sharing some of the more basic ornaments and giving an in depth look at the tree, but it is pouring rain down here in San Diego and so it is not a day for picture taking.

Instead I’ll jump ahead on my calendar and show you how I made this monogrammed ornament.

I figured that a Family Traditions tree would never be complete without a monogram, but at the same time I didn’t want anything overly formal, so I thought that a little handstitched initial would be enough of a nod to tradition without clashing with my oh so modern house.

I’ve made versions of this ornament before in different sizes and shapes. It’s really so simple and is an easy way of getting those workhorse ornaments I’m so fond of.

Embroider your design on your fabric, and cut the shape out with your design centered. For this one I obviously used a diamond, but in the past I’ve done stars and circle shapes by tracing an old scrapbooking template.

Layer two shapes right sides together, with your hanger in between the layers. Poke both ends of the hanger out of the shape so they’ll be sewn in place in the next step.

Then just sew around leaving an inch or so open, just like when you sew a pillow.

Push the hanger through the hole you’ve left open and pull right side out. Push all the points out as far as you can.

Stuff the little pillow full of fiberfill and close the hole up with a little fabric glue. My favorite is the standard Fabric-Tac, but just remember that a little of it will go a very long way.

With that same fabric glue, trace a line all along the seam and glue some trim down. Join the edges at one of the points and try to blend them together a little. For this portion especially, use very little glue. Like just a whisper. A suggestion of glue. But make sure that your trim is good and pushed down into it.

I really didn’t stress too much about making these things pristine or even overly neat. They’re just ornaments, you know? You’ll rarely see each one close enough to notice that you used glue instead of tiny intricate stitches. I worried much more about making them easy to crank out in bulk. I think by the time I’m done with these I’ll have somewhere between 36 – 46 ornaments (you know how I like my trees just stuffed silly), and that is just too many to be concerned with stitching trim down by hand.

As I’ll begin showing you tomorrow, I’ve completely revamped our usual Family Traditions tree, and since I was all kinds of excited about it, I had to keep the love going and make the gift tags for this year match the changes.

It also helped that I ended up buying a ton of ribbon for an ornament I planned on making that turned out ugly, so I had to come up with some way to use it.

Just like my snowflake gift tags, I made the center in Word with a couple of text boxes. But if you don’t relish the thought of messing about with a computer program, then you can just use this little picture I made for you:

Cut a length of ribbon about 24″ long. There is no reason for this to be precise, just know that the longer the ribbon you start with, the wider your finished rosette will be.

Stitch a running stitch along one side of the ribbon, down its entire length. You can do this by hand, or do what I did and run it through the sewing machine set to a really long stitch length.

Gather your ribbon by pulling the the end of the thread. If you’ve used your sewing machine, only pull the top thread. Pull as much as you can until the ribbon is super tight.

Tie the two thread ends together to bring your ribbon around and form a wreath.

With a little tacky glue or even hot glue if you happen to have it hot and on hand, stick your paper circle down to the ribbon rosette.

You can tape your gift tag down as is or tie a ribbon through the wreath to tie it around a basket handle or the neck of a bottle. If you use your sewing machine to make the running stitch, you can whip these babies out in not much longer than it would take to just cut out a plain old label.