Victorian Christmas

Hello everyone and welcome, specially also to new followers! Lovely to have you join me on my creative journey!
Today I am sharing a page in my water colour journal.

Ever since it started, I have been wanting to play in the Artist Trading Post new challenge blog, and every time I have just missed the deadline.
When I saw the new theme Stencil Mania hosted my the amazing Julia, I was so inspired by all the fantastic DT samples, that I knew I just had to prioritize for it straight away. So here is my journal page, full of stencilling....

The background to this page started as a kind of mop up page from other projects, picking up various Lindy's Stampgang and Tim Holtz sprays.

Then because of the challenge theme I added texture and crackle pastes through various Martha Stewart and Memory Box stencils, and when dry I added some Golden Acrylic Paint and Walnut Stain Distress Spray over the raised bits and highlighted with treasure gold. Here are some close ups:

As you can probably see I also did some more stencilling in the back ground with various Tim Holtz layering stencils and both Archival and Distress Inks. I also stamped and gold embossed a La Blanch swirl stamp in various places.

From that point on, the page kind of took on a life of its own and turned into a sort of Victorian Christmas page. (It was meant to have been something quite different originally)...

This little victorian Christmas angel (from the Papermania Vintage Christmas collection), was flying around on my desk, and she called out to me that she wanted to be placed there. So after that I then stamped and inked a Christmas tree stamp and added it to another corner of the page to balance it all out a bit. (No idea anymore who made that stamp, it's been in my box of Christmas stamps for ages).

I added some Ancient Gold embossing powder around the edges and adhered it to the page, covering up most of the crackled stencilling, ah well, too bad, it kind of just looked as if it was needed there.

The final bit was to add some bits of tissue tape and the words created with the little Tim Holtz letter tiles. I also added some snowflakes still, stamped in white Distress Paint and some highl;ight for a bit of festive sparkle with Diamond Stickles.
 I am adding this to the Artist Trading Post Stencil Mania challenge
That's Crafty Anything Vintage challenge

Thanks for coming by to look and have a creative week!!!

Variations on a theme

Hello all and welcome.
Today I am sharing another set of textured Christmas cards.

I don't remember a year when I have enjoyed making my Christmas cards quite as much as this year.... Maybe it's because I started earlier, maybe it's also because I decided to keep them simpler (well for me anyway) without all the tons of embellishments I used to add to my cards.

This set is not so different from the last set I showed, but made in a slightly different way.

I used a beer mat for the base again, but instead of covering it with gesso, I added a scrap of neutral coloured scrapbook paper. I adhered it to the beer mat, and when dry, sanded around the edges.

Next I added texture through a stencil, I used the Memory Box Lathenay and Heartwood stencils for this set. I am completely in love with them. It was my blog friend Dee Adams who told me about these gorgeous stencils. She had used one of them on a beautiful card she made me a while back.

Each of the 3 cards are basically done in the same way, after the texture had dried I added 2 colours of Distress Paints: Pumice Stone and Antique Linen, blended them with a baby wipe and then did some spritzing with Tim Holtz Distress Spray in Walnut Stain and a Lindy's Stampgang spray called Cowabunga Copper.

The final steps were to highlight the texture with Treasure Gold in two different colours, White Fire and Copper. If you use the back (black side) of a bit of Cut n Dry blending foam, it's much easier to just hit the raised bits.

The sentiment is from the Tim Holtz Christmas Nostalgia set. The Santa images are from a sheet of Maja Vintage Frost basics paper. I cut them out and them embossed around the edges with Stampendous Ancient Gold embossing powder.

Thanks for visiting like always and hope you are having a good week.