Folding Nativity Backdrop – December Silhouette Challenge

One of my favorite Christmas family traditions is setting up the Nativity scene. My grandma bought my sister and I our own sets and added lots of characters over the years (what, your nativity set doesn’t have a flock of sheep and a man playing bagpipes?).

This year I decided to set it up on the top shelf of the hutch, one of the few places the cat doesn’t go. Unfortunately it was disappearing into the woodwork, ever since I added the book pages it takes a lot to stand out.

I decided to paint a pretty ombre sky and add metallic vinyl accents including lines from one of my favorite Christmas songs to create a standing nativity background, the fact that it folds up for easy storage is just a bonus!

Nativity Background Supplies:

?  2 pieces of 12×12 wood (I bought a 12*48 foot board at Lowe’s and they cut it into 4 pieces for free)

?  3 shades of blue craft paint

?  Paintbrush

?  2 small hinges

?  Drill

?  Screwdriver

?  Silver adhesive vinyl

?  Die cutter and cut files*

Instructions:

1. Place your two boards side by side on a flat surface, chances are your boards are not identical so make sure you use the the board edges (not the cut sides) as the top and bottom.

2. Squirt the darkest paint at the top, the middle shade in the middle and the lightest at the bottom. It’s ok to be sloppy.

3. Using your brush smooth out the paint covering the whole board, moving from the lightest to the darkest. Blend the colors where they meet so you don’t have 3 rectangles of color but a smooth ombre effect.

It’s easiest to blend the colors if all the paint is wet so you want to move fairly quickly. Using a bit more paint than you would normally use will help get things blended too.

3. Once the paint is dry match up the boards so the dark side matches the dark side and place them face to face. Mark the side for the hinges. I didn’t have a small enough drill bit to put the tiny hinge screws in so I had to pre-drill them and put them in with a screwdriver. I used two hinges.

4. Set up, cut out and weed your vinyl. Use transfer tape to add the lettering to the board and then manually place all the stars. I cut a lot more stars than I ended up using

Free Nativity Background Cut Files: Studio File .SVG File

Check out my Christmas Page for more decoration ideas or start here:

Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?

My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!