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- Keepsake
Christmas Album
- by RACHEL
PAXTON
Do you hate
throwing your Christmas cards away every year as much as I do?
This year I decided to try to come up with some way to preserve
our Christmas cards, as well as find a way to organize all the
Christmas letters I've been faithfully filing away for the past
six years. I decided to make an album for our Christmas letters
using decoupage to decorate the covers with this year's Christmas
cards.
I love decoupage.
It's so easy to do and so versatile. It's really hard to get
it wrong. I started by finding something to paste the Christmas
cards on. I had some dark red card stock (next to the paper at
the office supply store) that seemed heavy enough to withstand
all the gluing. Next I cut our Christmas cards into all different
shapes and sizes. I cut out little characters, scenes, holiday
greetings, and even signatures of loved ones who had sent the
cards. I next arranged the cutouts, overlapping one another,
on the card stock, and started applying them one by one with
the decoupage finish.
There are several
kinds of decoupage finish available. You can find a variety at
your local craft store. I have two different kinds: Plaid Royal
Coat Antique Decoupage Finish, and Mod Podge Gloss-Lustre. The
first one gives an antique-like appearance. The paste yellows
when it dries, making your collage look aged. The more you apply,
the yellower it gets. The Mod Podge dries clear. I used the antique
finish and was quite happy with the result. You use the finish
to actually glue the individual pieces on with a paintbrush,
and then when you're finished (adding scraps here and there to
fill in the blank spots), you brush a coat over the entire page.
After it dries for about 10 minutes, you can apply another coat.
I found that adding several coats made the pages sturdier-more
like a album cover, like I wanted. I had just enough Christmas
card cutouts to cover two pages, one for the front cover, and
one for the back cover.
After the pages
were dry, I used a three-hole punch to punch holes in the covers.
I decided I would use wide fabric holiday ribbon to tie the covers
together. That way every year I could untie the bows and add
new letters to my album. I used 2 1/2-inch-wide wire satin ribbon
(dark red). I liked the wire ribbon. It was easier to adjust
the bows and looked really nice. It was also leftover from my
holiday gift making this year, so I didn't have to buy any extra.
When the covers
were ready, I arranged our Christmas letters from oldest to most
recent, and punched holes in all of them. I then placed them
between the covers and inserted the ribbon through the holes
and tied big red bows to hold them together. I chose not to string
ribbon through all three holes-just the top and the bottom.
I was really
happy with how my keepsake Christmas album turned out. It was
easy, took only about two hours to make, and I didn't have to
buy anything extra to make it. After you buy the decoupage finish
(about $5 a bottle), the uses for it are almost limitless. You
can apply it to almost any surface, giving you the opportunity
to create timeless keepsakes in a variety of ways.
Copyright Rachel
Paxton 2001
Author:
Rachel Paxton is a freelance
writer and mom who is the author of What's for Dinner?, an e-cookbook
containing more than 250 quick easy dinner ideas. For more recipes,
gardening, organizing tips, home decorating, holiday hints, and
more, visit Creative Homemaking at http://www.creativehomemaking.com.
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