More collages for Cris's book

Why is it we spend days decorating our houses for Christmas? What is the obsession with making the entire house look like the north pole? I have no idea, but once again, I felt compelled to decorate my home with TREES. I'll try to get some photos as soon as I am finished decorating, but right now, I'll share what little art I did today.
I just don't feel like I ever get this type of collage correct. I feel like the composition is all wrong, even though I tried numerous combinations and various pieces.

After painting the file folder, I began with some left over handmade paper that I'd printed an alphabet on for a previous project. The rectangle on the right was a gift from Halle, the little tag came on some eye glass frames a neighbor gave me. The rest were left over scraps. The star's base was a paint chip that I cut to size, then saturated with whithe glue, added crushed egg shells, and embossed using gold EP. Cost for materials? Paint, EP, staples, printer ink, glue.

I was looking for butterflies and found this cool strip of scrapbook paper, possibly given to my by Kathy. Since Cris is the assistant editor at her newspaper, I thought the theme was perfect. In keeping with the era of the scrapbook paper, I added an old letter that had gotten wet at some time. It was from Australia, but looked like it might have been written to or by someone in a long forgotten war. The image is from a magazine. Cost? Glue.

Please click on any image to enlarge it.