Creating for the Holiday Season

Holidays are a great time to bring out special, packed away items to commemorate the occasion – and by revisiting them each year, a tradition is created!

Christmastime for my family is one of those occasions when handcrafted treasures are brought out from their tissue paper wrapping, and displayed for our seasonal enjoyment.

Years ago I made some Christmas collages that hang on the wall, and I have one of them back now to enjoy in my home during the holidays.

Today’s post by The Daily Artisan is the fourth in a series on creative holiday projects leading up to Christmas Day on Saturday. Links to the earlier posts are included at the bottom of each day’s new post.

For these Christmas collages that can either hang on the wall or sit in small easels, I used the angel and tree designs included in yesterday’s post about handcrafted holiday cards. The picture boards are 8″ x 8″, and 1″ deep.

First, the angel and tree were heat embossed with gold powder onto a watercolor paper surface, and then I carefully cut them out with tiny scissors.

Watercolors came next, with each item painted in various shades of red and green to complement the gold embossing and signify the Christmas season. And of course, lots of bling was added with tiny jewels attached with (yes) tiny tweezers!

For the collage backgrounds, I selected sheet music in coordinating themes – “O Holy Night” for the angel, and “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” for the tree – and randomly rubbed on inks in sepia and pumpkin tones to age the paper.

A wide strip of green satin ribbon was affixed on the left side, and metallic embellishments and sparkly gemstones were added. I also added a thin red satin ribbon to the tree collage.

As pictures that would be seen from all sides, it was important to do a nice finishing on the 1″-sides all around, and I used gold satin ribbon for this.

Regardless of whether they’re on the wall by the hanger on the picture board back, or sitting in a small easel, the collages look completely finished from all angles, and the gold satin works really well with the hues of the collage fronts.

The angel and the tree were made three-dimensional by attaching pop dots that lift the figures from the surface of the sheet music. You can see this raised effect in the side views shown in these photographs of the collages hanging on the wall.

It’s so much fun to take common crafting items that start out as unembellished, white paper but turn into much more through your creative efforts! The collages look like they could be family heirlooms that for generations were brought out at Christmastime, when in fact, they’re actually not old at all.

Here are some of the angel and tree holiday cards from yesterday’s post that tie in nicely with the collages. The cards also were heat embossed with gold powder, painted with watercolors, and blinged out for sparkle.

It makes a great coordinated set when the gift of a collage picture is accompanied by a same-themed card with your handwritten, personal note to the recipient!