Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas

Hello all and welcome. Thanks so much for dropping in here during this busy time of the year.
Just a quick post from me to wish you all the most wonderful festive season!

I am doing a sponsor spotlight for Tando Creative today, over on the Our Creative Corner blog. If you want to see how I put this together, all you need to do is click HERE

Hope your festivities are going well and that you will have some time to be creative too!

Thank you so much for dropping by here, peace joy, good will! and HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!

Tim's December Tag

Hello everyone, and thanks for dropping by! So I thought my previous post would be my last before Christmas, and then I remembered I had not posted my Tim tag for this month, so just a quick post to show you my version:

Now Tim's original, like always can be seen HERE. I loved his December tag, but apart from the sprays and, inks and greenery, I don't have any of the things he used, so I just did my own version, sticking to my usual size 8 on top of size 10 tag.
My reindeer is from Tando Creative, as I don't have the die Tim used.

I glittered my deer, but without the help of the tea gadget that Tim used, I just sprinkled it on some glossy accents. As I don't have the tinsel, my little bells are just tied around his neck with some white string.

I cut and coloured my greenery pretty much like Tim showed, but arranged it slightly differently and added some tiny red berries for a little patch of colours.
My size 10 tag was embossed with  a snowflake embossing folder and then sprayed and inked like the little one.

At the top I added the month again, as I have done every month this year. And I also added the word journey, a theme rather big for me right now, in more ways than one. (It also happens to be the only word die I own...) I glittered it like the deer, which like usual is hard to see on the photo.

Well, that's it pretty much. Wishing you all a great season, hope you will find some time to relax and be creative too!
I am adding this to Tim's tag challenge of course.

Thanks for visiting like always

Secret Santa and a give away!!

Hello everyone, I am so happy you decided to come and visit today.
For today is the day that all the design team for  A Vintage Journey will show you the Secret Santa gifts we gave and received. I hope you will visit the other DT members too, to see all of their gifts, which no doubt will be amazing.

Let me start by showing you the gift I received from the lovely Julia Aston. This is what arrived in the post, all the way from the US:

Julia made this beautiful bag  and had also added a lovely tag and a whole little envelope full of die cuts, - loved them, as I don't own this die, it will come in very handy no doubt!
Here are some close ups of the front and back of the bag:

I love all the wonderful little details like the heart and the snowflake and the great combination of stenciling and stamping!
Thank you so very much Julia!!!

Now to the gift I created:
The person that I had to give to was the wonderful Alison (Butterfly) from Words and Pictures.

Well, it being Alison that I had to give to, I knew words would have to be a main feature in whatever I created. So in the end I made her a little mini, holding my favourite Christmas poem that I will share with you all at the end of this post.

I am not going to do a full step by step of how I made this, as that is not the purpose of this post, I will just mention that I was lucky enough to receive an enormous box from Decoart with many of the paints and mediums of their new Media line and several of those were used in the making of this book. In the new year I will do many step by step projects using these wonderful products, meanwhile
I'll  just show you the cover and one or two of the inside pages:

This is obviously the cover, I used a sort of faux leather technique for it.
And here are a few of the inside pages:

Each page is done in a similar way, as the main feature is the poem. Here is just the final page still:

As this is the last post I will share for a while as I am taking a blogging break over Christmas (apart from a couple of scheduled DT posts), here is the poem, and with it I want to wish you all the most wonderful festive season!!

CHRISTMAS THOUGHT

If we want to celebrate Christmas in a Christian way

There must be within ourselves a Shepherd and a King;

A shepherd who can listen to what others cannot hear:

Who with powers of devotion

Lives immediately under the starry heavens

To whom Angels are happy to reveal themselves,

A King, who knows how to give,

Who does not allow himself

To be guided by anything other than

The Star in the heights;

Who sets out to place

All his gifts before the crib.

But beside the Shepherd and the King,

There must also be a child

Who now wishes to be born.

I have no idea who the poem is by, I was given it my a friend some years back.

I hope I have not offended any non Christian visitors with this poem, but apart from the first line it is something I think, that gives food for thought, no matter what our outlook is.

Before signing off, make sure to stop by A VINTAGE JOURNEY, not only to see all the wonderful projects my teamies have made for each other, but there is also a give away with some fantastic Tim Goodies up for grabs, just to keep us all in the festive mood!!!

Wishing you all the very best for the coming days and weeks, I am flying out to Australia tomorrow to be with my grandchildren and will be back in the second week of January.

Thank you so much for all your support like always!

xxxxx

Let's celebrate!!

Hello everyone and a very warm welcome to you all! Great to have you visiting at this very busy time of year!

Today sees the start of a new challenge over at A Vintage Journey. Our host is the lovely Nikki, and this is what she had to say about the challenge theme:
You can make something to celebrate Christmas if you wish but lets not forget about those December birthdays, anniversaries, Hanukkah and New Years. It may be fun to focus on celebrations other than Christmas, it's up to you.

Well, I decided to alter one of Tim's wonderful worn covers.

Of course Nikki makes it clear that the projects don't necessarily have to be Christmas related, but, Christmas is a big deal in our extended family, and so my mind automatically did turn to Christmas.

I know Tim has designed a special Christmas version of this book cover, but mine originally was the "Chronicle" one.

Singing Christmas carols is a big feature of our festival celebrations, - two of my husband's siblings are professional musicians, (he is the oldest of 7 children) so with Christmas family gatherings of up to 30 people, singing carols in 4 parts is a regular occurrence. This led me to the idea that it would be great to finally have a place to keep some of the sheet music in. So, onto my project:

I started by adding areas of texture using two of Tim's layering stencils. When the texture paste had dried I covered both sides with washes of Distress Paints in Antique Linen, Weathered Wood, Pumice Stone and Walnut Stain. I also added some spritzes of the Distress Sprays in Pumice Stone and Walnut stain, while the paint was still wet, this helped to blend them.

Below you can see the back:

When everything had dried I added some stamping, using the pine branch stamp from the Christmas Nostalgia stamp set. The vines are a Johanna Sheen die.

Time for some embellishing:

The layered Snowflake, to which I also added a cut out snowflake from a Sheena Douglas embossing folder, raised bits highlighted with copper Treasure Gold.

The perfect stamp for this project, from the Festive Sounds stamp set by Tim of course. I stamped it and embossed with copper embossing powder, fussy cut it and then inked around it with Vintage Photo. The embellishments are several older Spellbinder dies and some bits and pieces from my Christmas stash. I also melted some bits of embossing powders around it, to fit in with the little arch below:

A little rusted up Tando arch. First I stencilled the numbers 2 and 5 from one of Tim's stencils, when dry I coloured them with a Faber Castell Big Brush pen and then fitted the arch over it. The rusting was done with the help of two Ranger Antiquities powders, Rust and Verdigris.

I decided to fix the ring binders inside with some twine, to make it easier to add further pages if needed.

Well, that was pretty much it. Finally a place to keep all my carol sheets together, even though I won't be using it much this year as we are off to sunny Australia in just a few days time. Carol singing around the Barbie is not quite the same somehow....

Hope you will pop along to the A Vintage Journey blog to see the wonderful projects my team mates have created, and hopefully you even find some time to play along and celebrate with us! It's always good to have a creative break from all the other holiday preparations!!! Remember if you do, you are in with a chance to win a voucher from our wonderful sponsor: Countryview Crafts, or win an honourable place as a pin worthy on our special Pinterest board.

Now before I sign off, I just wanted to mention that the design team have been doing an exchange of gifts as a Secret Santa bit off fun. If you want to see whom I sent to and the amazing gift I received, do come back on Sunday, when all shall be revealed!

FINALLY, - WORD VERIFICATION ON MANY BLOGS IS A BLOGGER GLITCH, - GET IT SORTED BLOGGER! I FOUND IT CAN JUST BE IGNORED, COMMENT AS USUAL AND IGNORE THE SILLY WV....

Thank you for visiting like always and have fun celebrating in the weeks to come!!

A House of Months or a Calendar House

Hello everyone and lovely to have you visiting.
Today I have a calendar to share which I altered using some of the amazing Decoart products I recently received:

This is one of these fun calendars that you can use over and over again. I was delighted when I found one in my local supermarket. This is what it looked like then:

It's quite nice really, but I did not want a calendar that would look so Christmassy all year long, so decided it would be perfect for altering...

First I gave all different parts 3 coats of Gesso. After that I added some Texture Paste through a Tim Holtz stencil and then added some colour with 3 different colours of Media Misters: Primary Cyan, Turqoise Shimmer and White Shimmer. These sprays are permanent and really intense in colour. This is what the house looked like then:

A bit too dark and not quite what I was after, so when it was dry I added a coat of Translucent White Media Fluid Acrylic. This stuff is amazing as it gives good coverage, yet stays translucent, without having to add any other medium, - brilliant.

Getting much better, as you can see, I also added some Burnt Umber around the edges for a bit more definition. Next I decided I really wanted some crackle in places too. So out came the Crackle Glaze, added in different thicknesses to different parts of the house, - this to achieve different sized crackle. (It's best to dry it overnight, not with a heat gun).

Well, while the glaze was drying, I started on the blocks, first I gave them the same treatment with the sprays:

Then I toned them down with the translucent white again and finally finished them off with some stencilled numbers (Tim Holtz) and some background stamping.

 I decided to keep the little blocks for the months more plain, for contrast. So all I did was ink around them with some Coffee Archival and then adding the months (computer generated).

Back to the house. Once the crackle had done its stuff, I added some Antiquing Cream to highlight the cracks. I can tell already, this is going to be one of my all time favourite products. Here's what it looked like now:

And here with the other elements in place:

Here you can see that I highlighted the stenciled texture with Treasure Gold to bring it out a bit more still.

Now I could have left it like that, but me being me, I wanted to add some embellishments. A clock seemed appropriate. As it so happened I had a little clock charm in my stash. It was a rather boring bright sort of bronze colour, so of course I altered it.

Some Medium Grey fluid acrylic, followed my antiquing cream and treasure gold did the trick. This is what it looked like now, more fitting to my shabby chic house.

And here is how it all ended up together:

Tim Holtz greenery, sprayed with Bundled Sage and Iced Spruce, then dabbed lightly with some watered down White Shimmer Spray. Roses from my stash, again treated with the white shimmer and some of the white trancelucent paint and finally a little resin bird.

So there you have it, my altered calendar house.

I'm just in time still to add this to the Artist Trading Post Exchange challenge where the theme is Recycle for Christmas. Well, as this is going to be a gift for a friend, I have just about done the theme justice....

All of the products I used are available from Decoart, where you can also get loads of product information as well as videos.

Stop Press: If you see word verification when trying to comment here, please note it has nothing to do with me, I have it firmly turned off, but blogger seems to be playing up on some blogs, I keep getting WV on blogs that don't normally have it....

Thank you so much for dropping by here during this busy time of year and I really hope you will find some creative time too!

The last three

Hello everyone and thank you for dropping by here at this busy time of year.

Today I am sharing my final 3 Christmas cards:

These cards were all created with the help of some wonderful Decoart products from their Media line.
I was fortunate enough to receive an enormous box from Decoart to work with, and though I have quite a collection of mixed media products from other companies, I have to say, these products are all fantastic and so easy to work with!!

Anyway, onto my cards: I started with three beer mats and covered them in a coat of Gesso. When dry I took one of my stencils and added Modelling Paste for texture.
 I seem to be obsessed with adding texture to my projects right now.. I also wanted some crackle so added some Crackle Paste with a pallet knife to the corners of two of the cards. (I forgot to take a photo of that stage).

Now one of my all time favourite products of the Media Line are the so called Antiquing Creams. They are like a very fluid acrylic paint, but never cure, so after it is dry you can wipe it off and it will only remain in the cracks of your project. If you click on the link you can view a video of how to use it, love the stuff! Below are some photos of the effect on my 3 cards. By applying a thicker or thinner coat, you can lighten or deepen the colours.

Hope you can also see the effect of the Crackle paste also.

Next I gave each of my "tiles" a quick spray with a Lindy's Stampgang spray, because I wanted a subtle hint of colour, I also added some background stamping and a thin coat of Raw Umber fluid acrylic paint for some definition around the edges, blending it in with a baby wipe. To highlight some of the raised areas I did some dry brushing with the wonderful metallic fluid acrylics, using both gold and silver for the different cards.

Here is one of them, it has a bluish Spray on it and dry brushed with metallic silver.
Finally I gave each of the tiles a coat of Triple Thick Gloss Glaze. This product does not belong to the Media Line, but is fantastic to seal a project and give it almost a ceramic look, which is what I wanted for these "tiles".

Each of them was then finished with a paper clay embellishment, a stamped sentiment and matted on a card.

 On this one I dry brushed first with some Quinacidone Gold, before adding just a bit of the metallic gold. I also added some splatters with Titanium White for a snowy effect.

 Here I still added a little rusted snowflake from my stash

On this one I used some more of the Quin Gold paint and gave it a Spritz with the Tim Holtz Walnut Stain Spray behind the leaf embellishment.

Well, that's it, hope you like my final cards, I have had great fun with them this year, but it feels good to have them done.

Thank you for visiting like always and have a great week!