Away in a manger

ATCs done and dusted, (see previous post), I wondered whether I still had time to enter this week's Christmas card Challenges, but for most of them I decided to wait for the new themes. But ABC Christmas Challenge runs fortnightly so I can do that one and this time the challenge is Q is for quote. I noticed some of the design team members had made lovely cards quoting the words of Christmas carols and songs and it reminded me of a project I did a few years back. I had just bought my first pack of mold'n'pour and went looking for things to try it out with. One thing I used was a very old decoration that has hung on my tree for many years. It shows a folk-art style nativity scene so I mixed up the two mold'n'pour elements and pressed my decoration into the resulting compound. Within a few minutes I had a flexible 'silicone' mould which I went on to use with air-drying clay. I was surprised at how much detail the compound had picked up. Once my decoration was dry, I painted it with a mixture of acrylics and permanent markers, and glazed it with diluted PVA glue. I made several of these and mounted them onto cards. Last Christmas I dug out the mould and made another dozen or so for my new friends in Spain. I knew I had one left over that must be lurking in a drawer somewhere, so I had a root around and found it, and used it for today's card.

I chose a royal blue base card, layered with pearlescent blue paper and then some shaded blue starry paper that I cut with a scalloped edge. (The bright sunshine has accentuated the shading in my photo). To mount the decoration I made a sort of rounded triangle with a scalloped edge using craft robo design master software, and cut it out of the same blue pearlescent paper. I typed the words of 'Away in a manger', cut them out, and used a matching blue mat cut with a nestie die. A tiny off cut of fused film made a bright star and I used shiny star peel-of strips down each side. I also have a Lavinia stamp of more words from this carol so I stamped that on an otherwise plain white, edged in blue, insert.

I am entering this in:
ABC Christmas Challenge ; Q is for Quote.
Make it Monday 51: Any papercraft project.
Stampavie and more: Christmas in Summer.
Totally Papercrafts Challenge 80: Christmas in August.
The Crazy Challenge, Christmas: Anything Christmas Goes.
And I am also linking it to Shirley Anne's blog Stamping for Joy, to add to my collection of Christmas cards.