Chris' Review	Renee's Review	Stephanie's Review	Pomaika`i's Review	Bethany's Review

Review by Chris

As Fall arrives, I cannot help but look forward to the winter holidays. I am always anxious to get started on my holiday gifts, cards and decorations. Plus, I must confess to having more than a few of last year's holiday photos to scrap. It's not quite as much fun to scrap Christmas in January. As summer comes to a close, I love to check out all the new holiday papers and embellishments that the manufacturers have created. One of my first stops is always Flair, where I can always count on finding some beautiful paper designs. This years Merry Little Christmas Collection did not disappoint me!

The Merry Little Christmas Collection includes eight patterned papers and two different sets of cardstock stickers. The colors in the collection are the rich holiday colors we have come to expect from the designers at Flair. The designs are a mix of tradition and whimsy and include ornaments, reindeer, candy canes, holly, word art and even a beautiful page of white snowflakes on a blue and purple background. The designs are complex with significant layering and all the papers have a distressed appearance. The cardstock stickers include scrapbook elements such as brackets, photo corners and tags, as well as a full sheet of ornaments of various sizes. The quality of Flair's products remains high. The paper is substantial, although not cardstock weight. It holds up well to all the distressing techniques you might like to use, and well as punching and die cutting.

As I mentioned, I almost have photos left from prior holidays. My son has become quite the uncooperative photo subject, always seeming to twist his features into some type of grimace as soon as the camera appears. Rather than become upset, I have learned to accept this as part of his personality. Thus was conceived this "My Scrooge" layout. I used three different patterned papers on this, as well as several cardstock stickers from the Merry Little Christmas Collection. The whimsical design was the perfect match for this non-traditional photo.

My Scrooge
Products used: Patterned paper (Flair Designs, Merry Little Christmas, Christmas Twist, Festive Forest, Christmas Sweater Stripe)
Stickers (Flair, Merry Little Christmas and Ornament Exchange)
Cardstock (Prism, Prismatics, Butter Cream)
Chipboard (Rusty Pickle, Youve Been Framed)
Felt Alphas (Prima)
Glitter pen and punches (Martha Stewart)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech Permanent Bond Tape Runner)

I am always on the lookout for cute, innovative ways to package gift cards and I stumbled upon this darling envelope design Angie Kennedy Juda's blog. I modified the original design to fit a standard gift card. Super simple and super cute and the Flair papers were perfect! I know I'll be making more of these.

Gift card holders
Products used: Patterned paper (Flair, Merry Little Christmas, Merry Berries, Dancer and Prancer)
Cardstock (Prism, Prismatics, Butter Cream)
Stickers (Flair, Merry Little Christmas)
Die cuts (Spellbinders, Nestabilities, scalloped circle and square punch, EK Success for Stampin'Up!)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Tape Runner)

This new collection from Flair certainly met all my expectations for quality and design. It's absolutely perfect for layouts, cards, and other holiday projects. Although Flair has eliminated the Flip-It feature from the reverse side of their papers, their website has a gallery full of great ideas for every collection. Be sure to check it out!

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Review by Renee

Flair designs is one of the premier scrapbook companies in the business these days. For years, they have produced high quality, fun themed scrapbook products for almost any theme imaginable. I personally have worked with a number of their lines and have always found them to be of the highest quality. The Flair Merry Little Christmas collection is no exception.

For this review, I received one sheet each of Christmas Exchange cardstock stickers and Merry Little Christmas Cardstock Stickers. I also received two sheets each of the following papers:

• Dancer and Prancer
• Christmas Sweater Stripe
• Oh the Ornaments
• Festive Forest
• Merry Berry
• Snow Flurries
• Christmas Twist and
• Holiday Cheer Words.

This collection has a wide variety of Christmas themed artwork and color schemes. Several of the papers have a blue/winterish theme, while others have a sophisticated burgundy and green theme. Still others have whimsical reindeer or candy canes for a more playful theme. The wide variety of colors and artwork make it particularly easy to work with.

For my first project, I created a layout showcasing my Christmas village pieces that I have collected over the years. I used the Merry Berry, Dancer and Prancer and Christmas Sweater Striped for a layout backdrop on my layout. I love the traditional color scheme this mix of papers created and love how they showcase the photo.

Title: Christmas Lights
Products used: Cardstock (Prism Prismatics White)
Patterned Paper (Flair Designs)
Stickers (Flair Designs)
Rhinestones (My Minds Eye)
Die Cut Machine and Font (Cricut)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

When I looked at the papers, several of them looked like fancy Christmas decorations to me. To capitalize on this feel, I glued two of the papers (Festive Forest and Snow Flurries) back to back to create a sheet of double sided paper. I then used this created paper to make a fancy Christmas bow for a gift this holiday.

Title: Holiday Bow
Products used: Patterned Paper (Flair Designs)
Brads (Making Memories)
Pop Dot Adhesive (Miss Elizabeths)
Glue Stick (Elmers)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

I really enjoyed working with the Merry Little Christmas collection from Flair. It is a beautiful collection and is well worth exploring as you search for papers to scrap your holiday memories.

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Review by Stephanie

Flair has been creating awesome paper collections for approximately four years and their collections continue to delight and amaze. I honestly love the variety, the colors and the styles that Flair creates. I had the pleasure of working with the Flair Merry Little Christmas Collection this month and I was absolutely thrilled when I opened the package. The patterns are sweet and fresh and the colors are awesome in rich jewel tones. While this is a Christmas collection, I was happy to find some winter themed papers also included.

For this review, I received 2 of each of the 8 designs. These are single sided sheets of medium weight pattern paper in assorted designs, aptly named:

• Christmas Sweater Stripe
  
• Oh the Ornaments
  
• Mixed Berries
  
• Christmas Twist
  
• Dancer and Prancer
  
• Holiday Cheer Words
  
• Festive Forest
  
• Snow Flurries
  

The colors contain reds and greens in keeping with the Christmas theme and blues and whites in keeping with the winter theme. The patterns are beautiful and very easy to work with. The words on the Holiday Cheer Words papers are all different fonts, different sizes, different styles and different colors, making it easy to mix and match the words with the other papers. I also received 2 sets of cardstock sticker sheets. Flair is known for their high quality stickers and these were no exception. Ornament Exchange included 25 different sizes, shapes and colors of ornaments. Merry Little Christmas included about the same number of stickers in circles, squares, tabs, photo corners and words a wonderful assortment.

I knew right away that I wanted to make a Christmas gift for a friend. I purchased a little wooden sleigh some time ago and it was just begging to be used. I first painted the sleigh in red and black, then using Holiday Cheer Words, I decorated the outside of the sleigh. I added Merry Berries to the platform and a sticker to the back, then added some ribbons to finish it off. I then wanted to include a candle so I decorated one to match. Using Christmas Sweater Stripe, I chose the section I wanted to use, then added the Christmas word strip to the center, machine stitching for some dimension. Forming the pattern around the candle, I then inserted brads as a decorative finish (and also to hold the paper in place).

Title: Sleigh and Candle
Products used: Sleigh (DME Inc.)
Pattern Paper (Flair, Holiday Cheer Words, Merry Berries, Christmas Sweater Stripe)
Stickers (Flair, Merry Little Christmas)
Paint (Golden, Making Memories)
Brads (Making Memories)
Other (Candle, Ribbons, Machine stitching)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner, Modge Podge)

I have been holding onto some pictures of my son working on a gingerbread house in 2005. I have been trying to scrap these pictures, but could never find the right papers. Once I opened this package, I knew these papers would be perfect. When coupled with some of the included stickers my layout was complete in no time at all. Journaling is on a tag that I have inserted behind the photos.

Title: Fun & Tasty
Products used: Cardstock (Prism, Herbal Garden Dark)
Pattern Paper (Flair, Christmas Sweater Stripe, Merry Berries)
Die Cuts (Cricut, Graphically Speaking, Plantin Schoolbook)
Ink (Colorbox)
Brads (Creating Keepsakes)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

For my next project, I just had to create some Christmas cards. There is no better paper, in my opinion, than any collection from Flair for creating awesome cards. This collection was no exception. Using different papers from this collection and assorted embellishments, I had 3 cards created in no time at all.

Title: Christmas cards
Products used: Cardstock (Prism, Twilight Dark, Mystic Medium)
Pattern paper (Flair, Merry Little Christmas, Dancer and Prancer, Snow Flurries)
Embossing (Cuttlebug, Christmas Tree, Village)
Ink (Ranger, Pitch Black, Snowcap)
Brads (Making Memories)
Stamps (Hero Arts, Stampendous)
Acrylic (Nicole Collection)
Paper Tagger (Around the Block)
Punch (Stampin Up)
Other (Ribbon)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

This is another wonderful collection from Flair. This is one I would recommend you have on hand when creating your layouts and cards for the upcoming holiday season. Even after creating all my projects, I have quite a bit over, so I do plan on creating some more Christmas cards. Thanks Flair.

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Review by Pomaika`i

I was so excited to be able to review Flair Designs new Holiday line, "Merry Little Christmas". Christmas scrapping is one of the few times I routinely use themed papers in my layouts and I am always in the market for excellent designs to use. It amazes me how many different patterns Flair Designs comes up with, not just for Christmas, but for all their various themes. I am thankful that they are designing the paper an not me since I would have run out of ideas a long time ago!

For this review I received 16 patterned papers (2 each of 8 designs) and two cardstock sticker collections (5.5 x 8"), called "Merry Little Christmas" and "Ornament Exchange." The predominant colors in this collection are forest green, sage green, burgundy, denim blue and light blue. These colors are mixed together to create a rich, joyful palatte. While not distressed in the conventional sense of the word, the printing of the designs are almost pixelated to create a hand-painted canvas look. Weathered and fresh, not old looking.

Each paper pattern is unique, ornaments, holly, reindeer, snowflakes, candy canes and peppermints, trees in the snow, stripes, and holiday cheer words. All are gorgeous and all are coordinated to go together easily for efficient scrapping. The weight of the paper makes a cardstock backing unnecessary, and perfect for altered projects.

The "Merry Little Christmas" cardstock stickers include a generous helping of words and embellishments. Mini titles, file tabs, a frame and some photo corners, the ever popular arrows and brackets, and more. The "Ornament Exchange" cardstock stickers is a collection of various sized and shaped ornaments, perfect for decorating all sorts of Christmas pages!

In my "Shoeshine" layout, I used a few of the ornaments as accents. I just added some embroidery floss and "hung" the ornaments from the top of my page. I love having the cardstock stickers available. They make such easy embellishment additions, and that saves me time.

Title: Shoeshine
Products used: Cardstock (Prism)
Patterned Paper (Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas)
Stickers (Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas)
Stamp (Inque Boutique)
Floss (DMC)
Ink (Adirondak Ranger)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner)

Last year I saw some Christmas Trees made of paper. I thought they were totally cool so I tried my hand at it. I made a cone shape from cardstock for the base. For the leaves, I cut 12 x 2" strips of patterned paper, folded the paper in to one inch strips, adhered the (long) loose edges together and cut small strips about 1/4 x 1". Then I individually adhered the leaves to the cone in rows. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a short cut for this process and it does take some patience. For the star, I stuck two of the cardstock sticker star ornaments together (trim to size) with a toothpick between them. I stuck the toothpick in the hole at the top of the cone and my tree was done.

Title: Christmas Tree
Products used: Cardstock (Prism)
Patterned Paper (Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas)
Stickers (Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas)
Glitter Pen (Gelly Roll)
Other (toothpick)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner, Tacky Glue)

I had a blast playing with this wonderful collection! If you are looking for a beautiful Christmas Collection for your scrapping needs, I highly recommend Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas Collection. Each and every pattern is beautiful, and your photos will be enhanced by the rich colors traditional to the season. The patterned paper designs are versatile and can be used as borders, full pages or accents. You will be able to use all the papers and cardstock stickers for layouts, cards or for altered projects. Nothing is worse than purchasing a set of papers and having so much left over that you feel you wasted your money. You won't feel that way with this collection, so go and grab yourself some "Merry Little Christmas" now!

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Review by Bethany

There is just something magical to Christmas crafting so when I found out that I would be reviewing Flair Designs Merry Little Christmas Collection, I was very excited. I wanted to make some new ornaments for my tree this year and Flair provided just the materials I needed.

The Merry Little Christmas Collection contains eight sheets of light-weight one-sided pattern papers and two sets of glossy cardstock stickers. One sticker set contains various sizes and styles of ornaments while the other is mainly words. The colors in this collection are forest green, burgundy, cream, light blue and denim blue. I was pleased with the slightly different Christmas color palette because it lends itself nicely to vintage inspired projects. The patterns range from Christmas trees, reindeer, ornaments, words, and candy canes to stripes. Most of the patterns are of medium size, which makes them easy to incorporate into any project. However, some of the Christmas trees were larger and would be fun to use cut-out as embellishments.

For my first project, I used the only blue-based pattern paper to make a Chinese lantern inspired ornament. The base of this ornament is an ordinary toilet paper tube that I glittered with Making Memories silver glitter. (It turned out so pretty that Ive decided that all toilet paper tubes should come this way!) I adhered my pattern paper strip using wet glue after I cut the center section using an exacto knife. The additional bling on the top and bottom is from silver Stickles.

Title: Lantern Ornament
Products used: Cardstock (Prism Prismatics)
Patterned Paper (Flair Designs: Merry Little Christmas Collection)
Toilet paper roll
Glitter (Making Memories)
Ribbon (unknown manufacturer)
Stickles (Ranger)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner) and (PVA glue)

My second project is a vintage looking ornament using a small circle of pattern paper and a sticker from the collection. The outside fan is made of vintage text that I cut into 4 strips about 8 inches long. I stickled the edges with green glitter and allowed it to dry overnight. I adhered the strips together using Ad Tech adhesive and folded every inch. Next, I adhered the two ends to make a circle. Gluing the circle to a scrap piece of cardstock keeps it intact. To adhere the center flower and pattern paper (that was cut using scallop scissors and stickled), I used wet glue. I love how this project turned out!

Title: Vintage Fan Ornament
Products used: Cardstock (Prism Prismatics)
Patterned Paper (Flair Designs: Merry Little Christmas Collection)
Vintage text
Stickles (Ranger)
Large Flower (Heidi Swapp)
Small Flower (Prima)
Button (Paper Studio)
Glimmer Mist (Tattered Angels)
Sticker (Flair Designs: Merry Little Christmas Collection)
Adhesive (Adhesive Tech, Permanent Bond Glue Runner) and (PVA glue)

I purchased a paper mache round ornament at a sale almost a year ago and have been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. Luckily for me, the Merry Little Christmas Collection was delivered to my door! The weight of Flair Designs paper was perfect for this project. In order to make this, I adhered my pattern paper strips using Mod Podge glue. Because of the finicky nature of the sphere, my paper strips did not lay perfectly. If you look closely, you will see that there are some wrinkles at the borders. Just like wrinkles on mature faces, I think that my paper wrinkles add character. I used my PVA glue to adhere the glitter and the red ribbon. Finally, I distressed the paper slightly with gold glimmer mist.

Title: Vintage Ball Ornament
Products used: Patterned Paper (Flair Designs: Merry Little Christmas Collection)
Paper mache ornament ball (unknown manufacturer)
Glitter (Making Memories)
Ribbons (unknown manufacturer)
Glimmer Mist (Tattered Angels)
Adhesive (Mod Podge and PVA glue)

After working with the products, I believe that the pattern paper would be difficult to use as a background paper for a scrapbook page without first backing it with cardstock because it is too light to stand up to the addition of many embellishments. However, when it comes to altered projects like my ornaments, I find the weight perfect. (It would also be perfect to use on a scrapbook page with cardstock as a background.) As for the stickers, I was very pleased with their stickiness. They were very easy to use and did not need any additional adhesive on my dimensional projects. They also stood up to a bit of altering as I stapled ribbon to either side. I like their weight and feel a great deal.

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