Secret Santa fun with AVJ

Hello everyone and welcome to another busy posting day here....
Today the team over at A Vintage Journey are showing the gifts they made for a team mate in a fun Secret Santa adventure we embarked on. My gift went to the lovely Tracy and this is what I made:

It's a book box, in vintage style. The outside was decorated by first covering it with strips of tissue paper. I then decoupaged parts of a paper serviette, both to the front and the back and then I painted around it with a variety of blue and white acrylic paints in various blue and white tones.
Here is the back:

And here the side:

The raised bits, achieved by wrinkling the tissue paper strips, were highlighted with Decoart Metallic Lustre in Champagne, I also used some Treasure Gold in Renaissance Gold and some Decoart Antiquing Cream in Burnt Umber to achieve an aged look.

I left the inside quite plain, I thought that perhaps Tracy could use it to store her Christmas Cards in.

I also made a kind of tag holder, out of two envelopes that I slid into each other. I decorated them with my own design papers from my Victorian Christmas Collection by C'est Magnifique.

I added some texture to the front cover with the help of a stencil and some crackle paste, - the sentiment is cut from one of the papers.
Here is the inside:

Each side was enhanced with the help of some die cuts and elements cut from the paper collection:

This is the left side, I used one of the Tim Holtz layered snowflakes to embellish it, I also stamped some snowflakes in Picket Fence Distress Paint, using one of the stamps from Tim's Grunge Flakes stamp set.

On the other side I used the Layered Leaf die, painted to match the elements of the papers, a doily cut from old book paper and some elements fussy cut from the paper collection.

Here finally you can see the tag that fits inside the pocket of this little folder.

Now I was lucky enough to receive a gift from the wonderful Nikki. She made me the most adorable little book.

Inside she had decorated the pages with images taken from my own projects on the AVJ blog. Such a sweet and fun idea. For me it was like a real trip down memory lane, as quite honestly, I had quite forgotten about some of them

Here is just one of the double pages, I just love how she has integrated everything together, so very clever! To see more details of her project for me, please visit her blog!!

Nikki, I absolutely adore the book you made me and I will treasure it , thank you so very much!!!

I also would like to thank Brenda for organising all of this. It was so much fun! Please make sure to check out the AVJ blog and visit all my team mates who took part, I can't wait to see all their projects in detail.

Thank you for visiting here today and have a fantastic week!!