How to Assemble Paper Decoupage Cards and Free Printable

Christmas is coming up quickly! For card crafters anyway.....

If you are like many of the ladies I know, you are starting your cards soon so you will have them done by Christmas. I thought I'd post a free printable sheet that can be used to make the 3D shabby "snowflakes" I posted last Christmas. You can see those here. I used them on cards and I made some ornaments for my Shabby Chic Christmas Tree.

Here are the sheets. Click on each one (this will open them so that they are full-sized) and print them at the highest resolution you can and they will look awesome.





Here is a smaller blue version if you would like it!




To assemble, here is what you will need.



Mounting foam. I get this at the dollar store or at WalMart. The often have them with the framing stuff. They have sticky stuff on each side and a peel off on each side.


Glitter. I used a clear one that has a little pink in it and some glue.



Prescision scissors for cutting out your elements. I didn't show it, but an Exacto knife can be nice for cutting out those little triangles in the middle. I tried to cut them with the scissors, but they looked messy.

Cut out your pieces so that they look like this. To assemble, you will choose the largest piece for the bottom and then pile them up largest to smallest.

Put your mounting foam on the backs of each piece and remove the sticker backs when you are ready to assemble.

To assemble, line up the design so it overlaps exactly as it was when you cut it out. YOu will notice that I didn't cut out these white triangles on the lower levels. You can cut them out if they bother you, but they aren't very noticable once you get the whole thing together.

And here it is assembled.

Next, I put some glitter glue (Elmer's will work fine) on the middle and then on every other section the whole way around.

Take a cheap paintbrush and smooth the glue on each section. I put the glue on the whole thing first and then smoothed it all at once. It doesn't dry very quickly so you can do this.

Next, find a piece of scrap paper that you can fold in half and use it under the following step. This will help with clean-up. Sprinkle glitter on the whole thing.

Now, tip the ornament up and tap it so that the excess glitter comes off onto your folded paper.

Fold the paper and pour the excess glitter back into its container.

Your ornament is ready to be used on a card as is or you can add a few more embellishments to make it even more shiny!

I added a ribbon loop and a crystal in the middle and I will use this on my Christmas Tree, but you can easily just glue it to the front of a card or even onto a compact disk that you have lying around. That will add some weight to it and make the back all prismy. (Is that a word? Probably not, but you get the idea)