Handmade Holiday - Holiday cards

I think it is finally safe to share the holiday cards I made this year...you could still have time to make a few if you are going to hand deliver them...

I started by drawing a very simple image onto some card stock.  There were more branches in the beginning, but I kept removing some because I was going to have to cut every single space.  Then I traced it onto a bigger piece and cut out all the openings leaving a frame around it.

 I cut large sheets of card stock into 4" x 8" smaller cards and traced the image onto each one.

 ...and then cut them out piece by piece.

 ...until the tree was all cut out.

 I dabbed on little spots of "tacky glue" because I had an old bottle of it and I thought white glue would make it too wrinkly, and hot glue would make it stick out to much...

...and then glued on a light blue background (can't capture the colour it seems, but it is robin's egg blue)...and don't worry, I went back and cut off that edge sticking out the bottom.

 I wrote my little message inside and signed before gluing anything onto the front, and had the rest of the family sign.  I like to put song lyrics in my holiday cards.  And next, the fun part...

 I drew a little chickadee onto a piece of paper.  Just in black ink.  Then, I scanned it in to the computer, shrunk it, and used a mailing label template to paste a whole bunch more onto a "word" document and printed it out in black and white.  Then I coloured in all their bellies and wings with pencil crayons.  Any bird would be cute, but nice chubby chickadees are my favourite.

 Then I cut them out with a tiny pair of scissors, one by one...

 ...72 of them.  Sometimes, I worry about my own self :)

Then, I hot glued them on to the front of the cards so they would puff out a bit from the branches.

I wanted to add some glitter snow falling among the branches, but due to unexpected events that took us out of town for most of a week, I ran out of time.  I think they look a little too plain, but my family will understand, I know.  Feel free to fuss them up a bit if you make some.

See, easy peasy, right?  

Warning...these take a good bit of time if you are making a whole bunch, but if any of you have one of those fancy Cricut machines, this would take no time at all I would think, and making just one for a very special person would be worth the effort, I think.

Oh, and by the way, you might have to make your own envelopes too, as a 4" x 4" envelope is very hard to come across.  Just sayin'.

Linking up with: Crunchy Catholic Momma for Stash Bash