Ed053 ChristmassceneCompleted by Pamela Horton The whispering Platypus

This design has made a most unusual and most effective Christmas card. The wrapped box shaped parcel along with the swirls indicating streamers and the round toys with the embellishments complete the Christmassy look to the completed card.

I used water colour pencils to colour in the elements.

I followed the directions as indicated on the sheet provided and I completed the stitching before attempting to attach any of the beads.

The threads I used are all metallic and I used single threads, except for the stitched stars and attaching the beads and for both of this stitching I used double silver threads.

The colours for the streamer swirls are dark green, mid green, a very pale green and a silver.

For the box shape I used gold thread, and for the circles I used red, dark green and copper. I used various sizes and colours of rice beads. This includes 6 metallic red 0.5mm rice beads, 9 metallic silver 1cm rice beads and 6 silver metallic 0.5mm rice beads.

I used 1 tiny round silver metallic bead for the centre of the larger round 6 point star.

I then used 16 silver glass 0.5mm tube beads to make the 2 identical shaped stars and for each of these I also used 5 tiny pearl coloured glass seed beads.

For the other 2 beaded stars I used 13 of these tiny pearl coloured seed beads and for the slightly larger star I used 19 of these tiny seed beads.

Altogether I used 80 beads to attach to the design.

The pale green card is cut at 16.5 wide and 32cm and scored and folded in half. I attached the red ribbon to the back of the finished stitched card, and I defined the edge of this white card topper with a gold metallic pen before I attached it to the 15.5square red backing sheet. using D.S. tape.

I have used snowflake peel off strips and some individual peel off snowflakes and a peel off sentiment. I have taken the ribbon to the inside of the green main card, to become part of the insert.

I have used silver peel off strips around the outer edge of the green card front and a gold and silver glitter peel off strip for the outside edge of the red backing sheet.

I tied the ribbon tails on to the left hand side of the card and secured it with red power tape.

This has made an amazing Christmas card, and I would like to try it on a black background and using gold trimmings and stars as the embellishments.

Pamela Horton.

The Whispering Platypus