Merry Christmas from our house to yours ...

The other day Mr P. the girls and I were out walking with the dogs and were paying particular attention to old post boxes and which Royal Crest they had on the front.  

We have a post box quite close to where we live which has 'VR' (for Queen Victoria) on it instead of 'ER' (Our present Queen Elizabeth).  

We think that this is quite special (although I am sure that there will be thousands of them around the country) .We like to guess how many Christmas cards might have been posted in the little box and of course how many letters will have been posted to Santa in it since the 1800's  

 I have never created a Christmas card with a post box on before so I thought I would have a go and here is the result ...

{if you would like to have a go the links through to the shopping list have been added so you can see the exact products used} 

I created the card on a large white square card as I wanted to be able to get quite a bit of detail on the postbox itself.

I covered the card with brown parcel paper and added strips of the following papers to the bottom of the card with double sided tape:

Authentique - Peaceful - Freeze 

Jillibean Soup - WINTER TORTELLINI - GARLIC FLAKES 

Bazzill - CARDSTOCK  - WITCH HAZEL CANVAS

I also added a strip of  ribbon

I used a Sakura gel pen to add some zig zag stitches

I drew a sketch of the postbox first so that I could make sure that everything was going to fit on the card.

{If you would like to use the sketch as a template just click onto the picture and print}

The template was then cut out and drawn around onto a piece of  Authentique Festive Paper

The black base of the postbox was created by dragging a black ink pad over a spare piece of the same red paper used to cut out the postbox.  As the Authentique paper is quite textured the ink pad hits and misses areas of the paper so you can still see some of the red paper showing through.

After the paper has dried re-trace the bottom of the postbox template, cut out and adhere to the bottom of the postbox.

The rest of the detail was copied from the original sketch onto the red postbox with the Sakura Gelly Pen .

The letters 'SC' came from a sheet of Basic Grey letter stickers which I coloured with an 

18ct Gold Krylon Leafing Pen (the same pen was also used to add the detail at the top of the postbox)

The white area (for the collection times) was coloured with a Tim Holtz white marker and then the detail added with the black pen again. {N.B. When you use the white pen you need to let it dry before you see the colour!}

The '&' sign came from the same sheet of Basic Grey alpha stickers used for the 'SC'.  

The 'Merry Christmas' stamp  and the 'Happy New Year' stamp  were stamped onto a little more of the Authentique patterned paper and trimmed.

'from our house to yours' was taken from a sheet of Jillibean Soup stickers

The Cardinal was trimmed from a sheet of Authentique Festive Paper 

The Holly leaves were punched using a Woodware Holly punch from the Authentique and Bazzill cardstock.

 beige ink was dragged around the leaves to create a little dimension.

A flower was added to the top of the postbox and  Red Gemstones were added to the middle of the flower.

Finally a little Stickles Glitter Glue  was added to the card to create a little sparkle!

I hope that you enjoy!