the twelve makes of Christmas: 3D paper decorations

As there’s now only four days until Christmas (how, how, how has this happened?), the twelve makes of Christmas looks more and more likely to be the six makes of Christmas, at best. I’m still trying to finish painting the vintage dolls cot we bought Daisy, as well as making the bedding, and a whole heap of other presents – which frankly, doesn’t leave much time for photographing tutorials. Hey ho, six is better than none, right? Right?

I’m guessing that this idea has probably been done a gazillion times before (I haven’t Googled it, so I’m not sure), but while I was trying to make something else (I forget what now, the whole of the last two weeks are a blur of yarn and cotton and fabric, interspersed with much tea-drinking and hand-wringing) I came up with the idea of…. folded card shapes glued together. Technical, huh? Brace yourself for the tutorial, it’s dead scientific….

You will need:

Sheets of fairly thin printed card (I downloaded some free scrapbook pages, and also some vintage sheet music) or old offcuts of wrapping paper (mine was wrapped around a lovely gift from Lucy of Lulastic last Christmas)
Shapes to draw round (I used cookie cutters)
Scissors
A glue stick
Some embroidery thread

1. Draw around your shapes onto the back of the printed card or paper three times – if it’s a repeating pattern, make sure they’re all the same way up.

2. Fold each shape in half vertically and crease down the middle.

3. Glue the halves together to make your 3D shapes.

4. If you’re going to hang them individually, thread a needle with a couple of strands of embroidery thread, and push through the top of the shape from front to back. Secure with a knot and hang on your tree / shelves / hooks / door handles / everywhere. To make them into a garland, insert the needle in the top of the shape from left to right, and then repeat until you’re left with all of your shapes strung together. If they’ve got a fairly wide base, you can also stand them up – stars look great standing, and so do triangles.

As well as basic shapes, I also downloaded some retro wrapping paper with old-style baubles on it, printed it off three times and made each bauble into a 3D model – they look delightfully kitsch standing on our mantle. They’re so simple to do – I made mine in front of the exciting end of series 2 of Homeland (have you seen it? If not, you are missing OUT!), and could have happily carried on into the night, had it not been for the fact that I ran out of paper. And TV.