Mandala Christmas Tree Postcards

It's early December and all of my postcards are done! I finished up the mandala Christmas trees this weekend. These were really simple and I'll share how I did them. You have plenty of time to make some yourself and you can use ANY fabric for your tree.  

But if you want to make cards like mine you will start with a mandala print. I hoard Paula Nadelstern fabrics so I have a lot of her mandala panels to choose from. If you want some Cotton Club has some of them left on the Kismet and Chromazone collections.

***Every fabric that I use on these cards is first backed with fusible webbing. Mistyfuse is my go-to fusible but any fusible will work. But these will be much easier if you can fuse them together.

These mandalas are printed with 8 symmetrical sections and I figured out what part I wanted for the center of my tree and then cut the mandala into 8 identical pie wedges.

My trees are about 4 1/4" tall in the center. Using my rotary ruler to carefully line up the center line I cut the bottom of my trees.

When I selected the mandalas that I wanted to use I also picked a background fabric. I went with mandalas in blue/lime/purple color palettes and found this batik for the background. These are cut 4" x 6" and fused to the same size pieces of Timtex or other heavy interfacing.

I found this stripe in my scrap bin and it is perfect for my tree trunks. I cut these about 1/2" x 1"

I found this great metallic (also a Paula Nadelstern fabric) in my stash to use for my snow-covered ground.

The fun part was fusing it all together! That went very quickly and, technically, you really don't have to do any stitching. But I like to add some stitching and I started with the bottom of the tree and the tree trunk. 

I added a little decorative stitching with this utility stitch and some lime thread.

Next I fused on a back and then finished the edges. I used a serger but a zig zag stitch would work just fine.

I wanted to add a little something else. I could have added an embroidered star but I have a lot of crystals and made those my tree toppers.

Here's are all 5 mandala designs. I made about 32 of these cards!

Time to get busy addressing 80 postcards!