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