Place Cards Tutorial

When thinking of magical Childhood Christmas, Clara and I always remember the ones spent in Argentina, during hot summer nights, around a very long table full of aunts, uncles and cousins. The dinner table was always the center of the celebration, lots and lots of food kept the family entertained until midnight, time when every year Santa showed up (yes, we had a real Santa)carrying very small but memorable gifts. Those memories move us every year to set a beautiful table, a table for the 9 of us to gather around, laugh and wait anxiously until midnight!

It's on the table that we find the first gift of the night, a small token of handmade love used as a place card and meant to be trasured forever....

These are the beautiful, nostalgic ornaments that Clara made in 2007 (she will not show me yet what she's doing for this year!) for each guest and that ,of course, I'm displaying in my Christmas tree.

She used black and white copies of old protographs of each guest mounted on festive papers and cardstock and glammed with a clear glitter. With a metallic marker she wrote the year, added a ribbon to hang it from and finished them with a touching Christmas thought on the back:

"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other."

She picked baby blue and silver for the boys and shabby pink and taupe for the girls....This is my now 17 year old when he was only one...

And this is my sweet 14 year old when she was just a baby...

Since I can't remember what I did last year, I guess it wasn't memorable enough, I'm sharing how to make the place cards I'm using for our 2008 Christmas Day Lunch. You will need:

Floral Wire (22 gauge), Wooden star (Michael's $0.25 each), Glitter, Monogram stickers, Crepe Paper, Glue, Glue gun, Cardstock, Small pliers

I start by cutting the wire in an approx. 13" piece. I wrap it around my glue container (it's just the perfect size) working the wire in a base, the rest of the wire is then wraped around a pencil and the end is finished in a little curl using small pliers.

I cover the star in german silver glitter, leaving the center clean of it.

I add crepe paper ruffle to a 1" cardstock circle. Trim the crepe paper and add the Monogram sticker with the initial of each guest.

I glue it to the center of the star.

And then I glue the star, using a glue gun, to the curl on the wire top. Once dried, you might have to play with the wire until your star is in perfect balance to stand all by itself.

Voila!! I'm making them a few weeks ahead because I like the tarnish look they get with time...I promise that I'll post Clara's as soon as she lets me...I know it will be fab...I'm the older Sister, I taught her everything she knows!!!...just kidding!....LOL

"Big sisters are the crab grass in the lawn of life."

~Charles M. Schulz~