Product Spotlight Featuring Echo Park Paper

If you haven't yet started your Christmas crafting, this is your official notice that it's time to get going!  In the spirit of all things Christmas, I'm putting a spotlight on the Season's Greetings collection from Echo Park Paper.  This happens to be my personal favorite Christmas line this year, so it was really easy to whip up a few projects this weekend.  (And I have even more in my head, lol.)

My first of three projects today are some Christmas ornaments.  I do something different with the kids' school pictures every year, and this year's ornaments are made from these sweet over-sized bottle caps.

This is the "top", or outside, of the ornaments,  I covered them each with a paper and embellishments that best suited each child.  I also personalized them with their names and ages so I won't have trouble remembering what year they are.

The left one is embellished with a snowflake brad from the Assorted Brad Pack and letter/number stickers from the collection pack.

The center one is embellished with a wreath from the Season's Greetings chipboard and letter/number stickers from the collection pack.

The right one is embellished with a snowman sticker and letter/number stickers, all from the collection pack.

This is the inside of the ornaments.  I simply lined them with the same paper I used on the outside.  Then I used a large circle punch to cut out their school picture and adhered them to the centers.

In order to hang them, I used a Dremel tool to drill a hole in the top center.  (If you don't know what a Dremel is, I suggest you Google it - it's a handy little tool for all sorts of uses!)  I then doubled some thin satin ribbon and pulled the ends down through the hole and tied an overhand knot.  I trimmed the ends then pulled the ribbon back up until the knot was against the hole.

My second project is a clear gift pail I picked up at Michael's.  I love to fill these with matching paper shreds to hide some little gifts.  They are especially fun for kids as they try to peek through the pail to see what the gift is!

Beautiful, even empty!  I love how the "back side" of the double sided paper shows through.  I used Scor Tape to attach everything, since it holds to plastic well, and keeps things stuck to the curved shape better than other adhesives.

I added a thin border of black cardstock to make that poinsettia paper stand out more.  Next I cut the sentiment from the sheet of Journaling Cards, inked the edges with black ink, and matted it on some coordinating green cardstock.  I poked a hole in the corner and strung through some Doodle Twine, tying it in a bow on the front.  To complete the look, I cut a circle for the lid from the same poinsettia paper.



My final project is a clearly fabulous Christmas card!

 You may wonder why this card looks a little "different".  Well, it's because this is NOT your ordinary card.  This is a clear card, cut with my Cricut from a Clear Scraps Acrylic Sheet.  I cut this one using the card on the Thanksgiving cartridge. (If you're cutting with a Cricut, be sure to test - I needed to multi-cut 4 times on mine with a deep cut blade set at 6 and Max Pressure.)  Here's a view where you can see a little better how the whole clear thing comes in to play.

The key to clear cards is layering, so the outside pieces cover the  inside pieces properly, and add dimension. I used Liquid Glass from Close To My Heart as my adhesive.  It dries clear and is much less noticeable through the clear card than other adhesives.

I started with the inside front of my card.  I adhered a strip of red snowflake paper to the inside front bottom edge and trimmed it by hand after the adhesive dried.  I also adhered a snowflake Journaling Card to the upper left of the inside.  On the outside front, I adhered the rocking horse from the Layered Chipboard on top of the Journaling Card.  Lastly, I wrapped the entire front of the card with some green ricrac from my stash.  In order to keep the hills & valleys matching, I extended the ricrac off the edge of the right side somewhat.  I then added a Craftwork Cards CANDi near the end.

Here you can see the inside of the card, and the matted sentiment I chose to hide behind the embellishments on the front of the card.  I started with the outside back of the card.  I covered the entire back with the striped paper using the Liquid Glass.  Then I moved to the inside back.  Checking against the card front, I adhered a strip of green cardstock across the entire width.  Next I cut a blue mat 3" x 4", the same size as the journaling card on the front.  I lined it up with the journaling card and adhered it on top of the green strip.  Finally, I added my sentiment using stickers from the collection pack.

You can check out the entire collection here - I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do!  I hope you liked today's projects.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think!  I'd also love it if you become a follower or follow by email.