laura's frayed knot: 12 days of Christmas

Silhouette cut file for these images can be purchased here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/259206143/christmas-villages-nativity-and-reindeer?ref=shop_home_active_1

You can see that the Baby Jesus is a separate piece from the manger... so that it will work for the 12 days of Christmas... (mount both pieces on the block then cut them apart.)

Here is the pattern for the vinyl on wood set...

For the twelve days of Christmas thing I want to do, I am going to be making a much smaller version - I really like this wood version but it is very large - out of watercolor paper..

This layout is about 20 inches long... a much better size. = ) and it can be squished smaller if need be..

Here are the patterns...

If you are going to be cutting the figures out of paper then you need a way for them to stand up. What I came up with is to use plexi-glass (or Polycarbonate Sheet). You can stack them 4 high, tape them together with masking tape and cut them out using a scroll saw. To make the notch in the bottom of the paper figure, I used a Fiskars rectangle hand punch. It works perfectly with the 1/8" thick plexi-glass.. (and the image size should be 8 x 10)

I also include a copy of this with the pieces (at the end of the 12 Days of Christmas, of course.. when you give them the storage stuff..) so that if they want to set it up again next year they will know what stands go with what pieces.

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You can obviously size these patterns to be any size you want but you will need to keep them all proportionate to each other. To make this the size that I made, they all need to be sized to 8.5 x 12.

Since the remaining figures only took a half a sheet of paper, I copied them twice to one page to save paper.

I printed these onto 8 1/2 x 12 pieces of heavy watercolor paper. The paper comes 9 x 12 but to fit in my printer I had to cut it down to 8 1/2 x 12. I also had to curl the short edge (8 1/2") so that the printer could grab the paper - which is why I left the paper 12" and have the figures at the bottom so that there is a 1" extra space at the top so that the figures aren't printed on the curled part of the paper...

does that make sense?

oh, the angel and star are glued to some clear 10mm plastic....

the finished angel and star. They are glued to 10mm plastic. In the past I have been able to buy this by the sheet from a copy store like Kinko's. The measurements are on the pattern. The bottom of the star comes to just above the stable and the angle a bit below that.

Baby Jesus and Mager instructions:

Use a ruler and a stylus and score a fold line along the top of the manger... If you look hard you can see it in the picture!

Then fold the paper on the score line. Cut out the manger.

Here is is all cut out. I obviously didn't follow the cutting lines very well.. Don't cut out the triangles on the bottom half of the pattern..

Fold it so that the printed cut lines are on the inside.

Use the Fiskars rectangle punch to punch both layers at once.

like this..

now decide which side is the back and punch just that layer again as shown.. This allows the acrylic base to fit. If you're using thinner paper then this step might not be necessary.

The manger now looks like this....

Slide the plexi-glass stand on.

Baby Jesus slides down between the layers of the manger as show.

All done!!

They are different pieces because for the 12 days of Christmas the manger shows up early and Baby Jesus is the last piece so out of necessity they have to be separate pieces.. If you aren't using it for the 12 days of Christmas, you can easy just make it a single layer, one piece thing.

Here is the storage box for Baby Jesus and the sheep. The slit in the insert is for Baby Jesus to help him not get lost... The manger and sheep also go in this box so they don't get lost either..

The box pattern page has the pattern for the insert. There is a line on that pattern that needs to be cut with a craft knife. After taking this picture I added the text to the pattern.

This is a wider stable if you prefer... You will probably have to copy this to a photo editing program to make it the right size.. I originally made one like this but it was just too much so I went back to the smaller one.

How the pieces fit in the storage box. The book will go on top next to the small boxes.

One small box is for the plexi-glass pieces, the other is for the small paper pieces.

Here are the patterns for the storage box for everything... to make sure they are the right size, copy and paste them to a photo editing program and size it to 8 1/2 by 12. ( do like for the other watercolor paper and use 8 1/2 by 12....)