Holly Wreath

 This weeks challenge over at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown is to use a wreath on your card. Also over on J and C Creations challenge blog the theme is anything goes using Sizzix dies so this card joins them together nicely.
The holly leaves have been cut from cream card stamped with a music score. There were four different colours used, Archival Coffee, Distress Brushed Corduroy, Distress Forest Moss and Distress Iced Spruce. I cut 30 leaves from the Sizzix Festive Greenery die as it has four different holly leaves on it. All the leaves were then edged with Distress Forest Moss.
The wreath was built by gluing each leaf to another, I used a round shape as a template to help me keep a decent shape, it's not as easy as you think to make a good circle!
Having glued the wreath together I then stuck red gems on as berries and put a red bow at the top.

The numbers are cut from sticky sided card using Sizzix alphabet Round Table. Peel off the top layer and sprinkle with gold glitter, I found that the glitter was shedding a little so I sprayed it with hair lacquer to fix it.
The numbers are mounted on foam pads and fixed in the middle of the wreath.
The backing paper is from Chocolate Baroque CD Rom Seasons Greetings printed in draft so that it's paler and doesn't overpower the wreath. The holly paper is matted on to red mirri card and mounted on to what used to be a white card blank, the edges have been coloured with Distress Forest Moss to get a nice dark green as the white didn't look good. In the corners of the holly paper are small gold peel off corners, I've used peel offs because I can usually get two or three corners to emboss well but the fourth never seems to work.
It was fun making a Christmas card in such hot weather, after all it was too hot to be outside wasn't it?!