Christmas Holly postcards

I have been wanting to make a holly-themed postcard for a while. I did one the one below in 2013 and it was based on a stitching technique used by Cane Glendening. I've been wanting to do another and this is finally the year, 10 years later. 
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I wanted this version to be an applique version. This photo shows how I start my cards. I always start by cutting some sample fabrics to size and arranging then on a " x 6" piece of backing fabric until I get something that I like.
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I think it took 3 evenings to cut all of the leaves and berries. I cut them from pre-fused fabric. I made cardstock templates for the leaves and traced them on the paper backing of the fused fabric and then cut them out. There were 120 leave parts and 90 free-form cut berries. Before I cut the berries I removed the fusible backing paper because removing paper from the tiny berries would have been a pain.
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I had not intended to make them sparkly but when I started stitching the leaves I realized that they need more than simple straight stitching, like yesterday's birds. Couching Razzle thread seemed to be the right idea. For the berries I just free-motion stitched around them with a dark red thread.

I serge the edge of my postcards and I felt that I needed some sparkle to the edges of these cards. On the serger I can run two (or more) threads through the loopers. I picked a red metallic and a red shiny acrylic for the upper looper. When I need to run a slippery thread I often set the cone in a cup of rice and that keeps the thread from sliding down and getting caught under the wound thread at the bottom of the cone. I've had this same cup of black rice sitting in my sewing room at least 10 years.
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I made 30 of these so now I have a total of 56. One more set to finish up today!