A Christmas Carol 3D

"This is so not my style." were my thoughts when I first saw the Lettering Delights' A Christmas Carol 3D Cut It Project. LD had sent me several files to play with prior to their Black Friday release and I couldn't help thinking that this set is so not me. I'm all about cute, or simple, or minimalist like Patricia Zapata's designs. Besides, I was preparing to go on a weekend trip to Leavensworth and the last thing that I wanted to do was a project that takes a long time to assemble. Yet something about this set challenged me. I love 3D and I can't walk away from a set that has that in its name.

      

I started this project with the reindeer. In fact, I had cut out this reindeer, assembled, photographed, and posted it to Facebook in 5 minutes. Hubby was a bit annoyed that I was doing it just before leaving town and in my haste, I actually put the antlers the wrong way. Thanks for not noticing my mistake when I posted it on the blog last week. :-P

I started cutting and assembling the set upon our return from our trip. Now, do note that what I am showing you on the blog today is my take on the project. I don't know what was LD's vision when they made this set but I was told that the Santa does not go inside the sleigh and the reindeer, as you can tell from the preview on the LD site, faces the left. I totally went against that. I stuffed the old man into the sleigh and flipped the animals to face in the same direction of the sleigh.

Speaking of the sleigh, I had to strengthen the bottom sled portion by cutting and adhering two layers for each side. Due to the "hole-ly" design that leaves empty spaces inside the cuts, the sleigh is not able to withstand the weight of Santa with just one layer (cut with regular cardstock). Maybe that's why LD told me that he was not supposed to be inside? Oops...  :-P

Now about Santa...

Santa is really quite easy to assemble and this is how I put him together so that he stands:

As for the trees, I cut out 3 layers for each tree, then adhere them together with glue and tape.

I started this project using Make-the-Cut and my Silhouette SD but realized later that I needed the larger cutting size of the Cameo to cut out the sleigh. I used the printer-driver method to cut to the Cameo with Make-the-Cut.

The patterned papers that I used for this project are by My Mind's Eye. I used their Holly Jolly and Signature Christmas 6x6 paper pads for most of the layers. The 12" x 12" cardstock used for the sleigh come from their Stella Rose Hattie (Boy) and So Sophie Graceful (Open Your Heart) collections.

All the layers in the project are easy to cut and assemble. There aren't any pieces that I would consider intricate. The sleigh may be the most challenging piece to put together but if you are familiar with how LD usually handle curved parts in their 3D shapes, this would not faze you.

I'm surprised that I completed this project in a shorter time than I expected. I'm even more surprised that I actually like this piece a lot despite the fact that the designs are not what I would usually use. The whole thing looks really good on display. In fact, I'm thinking of gluing everything down to a base so that I can move the whole setup without having to reposition and stand the reindeer every time I put it out. This project looks so cool I know that I'll be putting it out quite a bit.