Pinterest Christmas Card

Pinterest - who's not addicted to this love/hate relationship with yet another online social media?? I'm definitely guilty of it. The numerous drool worthy pictures of recipes that promise to deliver succulent results, motivational pictures to make our yearly resolution of getting fit last just a tad bit longer, inspirational pictures to document your pregnancy journey, and the list could go on for miles on inspiration for everything under the moon.

While I may pin away and delve into more details later, the one that kept tapping me on the shoulder was this one:

{Source via Alice on Pinterest}

*swoon* How freakin adorable! My heart totally melted upon sight and I forwarded the link to the hubby via email. Stat. Time of discovery: Thanksgiving-ish? The hubby said it was cute and that we should totally replicate it. The hunt for the garland was on. Via the couple in the picture, the garland was a product of Anthropologie many years ago. Aka no longer available. Well crap.

While I sourced local craft stores (e.g. Hobby Lobby, Michaels, JoAnn's, etc.), that garland just wasn't available. Sigh. Hopes and dreams for the photo came crashing down and got brushed under the rug. Why don't I just re-create it you say? I totally would except I can't even cut a straight line that's drawn out for me (how embarrassing). How in the world do you expect me to cut straight AND make sure all the letters are the same size?! Ha! Puhleez!

On December 14, during a casual convo with the hubby's cousin's wife (does that make her my cousin-in-law??), the above picture was brought up. Her response, "That's easy to replicate! Just use my Cricut!!". Cue record player scratch. Home girl say whaaaa?? And that was how my hopes and dreams for the photo was brought to life again. Great, but who's going to photograph us?! Enter friend we've gotten to known via the donut shop - Mrs. Deanna Campbell! She said she could squeeze us in that Saturday afternoon. Yay, but holy mackerel, that means I gotta make the garland pronto! Would we get the photos back in time to get the cards printed and mailed before Christmas???

The next day, the hubby was awesome and accompanied me to Hobby Lobby to source the paper to re-create the garland. 1.5 hours for 10 sheets of paper later, we had our paper! 1.5 hours for 10 sheets of paper??? Really?? Major props to the hubby for being uber patient and providing insight the whole time. Paper in hand, let the crafting begin!

First up, cutting the backing for our garland. Paper used - leftover card stock from our wedding programs. Booyah! 10 minutes later...

Ta da! Easy peasy! How freaking awesome is the 

Cricut man! Perfectly cut letters. Nice!

And to make sure the size was appropriate for our use, I had the hubby lay down next to it and pretend he was holding it.

Looks good right? P.S. we won't be using the exclamation

point. The cricut cut 3 letters per page and I had extra space

on the paper left so I figured why not utilize the void. Ha!

Next step, cut the front piece of the garland!

The cricut didn't like the paper we selected for the Y,

S, and H.  It totally hated the paper we selected for T

and promptly ate it up, hence the missing T.

The final step was to put it all together with some yarn as our string. We decided we would "sandwich" the yarn between the card stock backing and the front pretty letters via double sided stickers. Tape the top together, place string underneath tape position, then tape right below the string. Easy enough right? Fail. Obviously, no craft is ever complete without a road block. The sticker just wasn't strong enough to bind the two different types of paper together. I knew I couldn't use glue as this would cause "bubbles" to appear in the paper. What to do, what to do? Super frustrated, the hubby said use staples! Say whaaa? That's definitely not going to be pretty! Tacky even! He reasoned the camera would be far enough away and the staples would blend in with the paper we chose, it wouldn't be noticeable. With the photo shoot being the next day, I had no other choice but agree and proceed. I cringed each time the hubby stapled as I imagined the hideous staples making its debut in our photo.

Saturday afternoon came much too quick. After closing up shop and running our errands, I had less than 30 minutes to get showered up and look somewhat decent for the photo shoot. With just concealer on, I went sans makeup to the shoot. Ew! Here's how the shoot went. Beware: loads of pictures ahead!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think of our garland? Guess the hubby was right about the staples. Hate it when he's right! Ha!

Not sure if you noticed or not, but our "replica" picture failed also. The white walls of the building washed out the few last letters of our garland. Mrs. Deanna made a valiant effort to "fix" the problem, but no can do. However, Mrs. Deanna turned these pictures around to us in 2 days!! That's just unheard of! Thanks, Mrs. Deanna!

Which picture do you think we chose for our Christmas Card? By the way, they were mailed and received by our friends and family prior to Christmas. Score!





*all pictures above were taken by Deanna Campbell Photography