the new take on christmas cards: the postable christmas garland!

A very merry christmas my friends, I hope your christmas days are filled with good moments and that your thoughts of the new year are filled with dreams and hopes.

Our christmas started a few days ago, with the sound of a card falling on our doormat, followed by a young boy's voice shouting through the open letterbox: "HELLOOOOO JOOST AND MARIJE!"

It was our young neighbour Mees (6), proudly delivering his own christmas card:

Der Jost and Marije.
I hop that yu haave a nice christmas party.
And I hope that yu seend bak soon.

Geetings, Mees and me whoole class. 

Isn't that just the best card ever?
And the day after his big sister Vera (9) followed with an alarmingly orange handmade card for us, with a "very festive chicken on it with a REAL tail" ( her words). Our letterbox is still a bit sticky from the still wet glue that she had used to glue feathers on the chicken's bottom, not waiting to let everything dry before delivering it.

And with those acts, they captured what I think is the essence of christmas: wishing good for people  not because they had to, but because they wanted to.

So I decided to follow their example and make some christmas cards!

But where to start? Well, after thinking back to my own difficulties with christmas cards ( where do you leave them?) I decided to give the old tradition a whole new twist: A christmas-garland-card!

It all started with this old book, picked up for about 50 cents in a thrift shop because I really loved to cover.

"Far away from home"
Well, she goes to Germany, so it's maybe not that far away from home after all.."

and the inside is very pretty too:

"chapter eight, the snow queen"

I'm already beginning to feel a bi of christmas here! 

I displayed the book. I even read it (spoiler: she comes home again). But the book was in a really bad shape. all the pages where beginning to fall out. And though the book was pretty, it wasn;t old enough to be special. So I decided to do something that I usually don't do to books ( because books are in my eyes something you need to protect): I decided to cut it apart.

So, I carefully separated the pages from the cover ( which will be saved to use in a future project) and started cutting little triangles from the pages. I did feel like a brute, but then again, the faith of the average thrift shop book is much much worse.

If you'd like to make a garland yourself: the size of the triangles is completely up to your taste. Mine where about 4,5 cm long.

I made sure to also cut a few white triangles, where I could write my christmas wishes.

Love that embellished letter!!

no all that is left to do is assembling them! The logical option was probably glueing them onto some sort of string. But thinking back to Vera's home made chicken card, I realized that sewing them would probably be even easier.
So I set up the sewing machine, and got to work!

working in the dark, because we where also watching a movie..

it is really easy: use a slightly older needle ( because paper won't improve the quality of your needles) and simply feed the triangles through the machine. I let the machine do about 3 free stitches between every triangle, to give them all a bit of space.

My garlands where about 7 triangles long, and all included a few blank pages for writing.

the book even came with illustrations!

The process was a bit messy though, in our not too spacious tv-room..

but sacrifices needed to be made in order to multitask between movie watching and card making!

So, after repeating that process quite a few times, I had a while bunch of christmas garlands, ready to be send!

just quickly including a wish...

that will do!

and a name...

that's us!

an tadadadaa! the christmas-garland-card was ready!!

looks rather stylish, hanging from the home-made shutters that I DIY'd last week...

I deny all accusations that I included this picture to show off  the shed-in-progress that Joost and I ( with some parental help) are currently building... 

and it also fits in our minuscule christmas tree!

let's just call it a minimalist approach on christmas.. okay? 

And although it would be impossible to send all of you a card, I'm wishing everyone of you, wherever you live, and whatever your christmas looks like, a load of happy thoughts. 

Much love!