DISENCHANTED

ARTastic this month has a great challenge which can be Christmas -themed if you wish and has also added a colour palette.

I've chosen to use a photo of my son's first Santa encounter at 15 months of age.... he was so NOT impressed, as can be seen by his facial expression. Normally he would have been smiling as at this age he loved having his photo taken ( how THAT has changed!).

The background was originally done as an explore piece at timetocreate  and involved colouring- up  this diamond checker-board patern with Pan Pastels... the first time we had used them. To the layout we also added a decoration (made in the same class) and an embossed frame with added highlights of Inca Gold. The background has been sitting around for about a year now in my UfP (unfinished projects) pile. The title I originally went with didn't work out, so I cut out sections where it had been, as well as additional segments,  and placed  the lot onto a smooshed red background.  Green,blues and yellow, as suggested by the colour palette, were also added to the embellishments and parts of the diamond paper. This was done by inking with chalk edgers.

The gold stars are tags, which I've also smooshed and decorated with Perlene Pens.

Pop on over to artastic and have a look at what the rest of the team has done. You'll find amazing ideas to inspire you. I hope you can join us this month.

Cheers for now,
Di

DIAMONDS IN THE SKY

Hi! Today I'm sharing with you my first DT piece for ARTastic. The inspiration image for this month's challenge has come from street art by Vexta, with the added criteria of using diamond or triangular shapes.

Pop on over to: http://artasticchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ to see what the DT has come up with for this. There's still time to enter and we would love to see your art.
For my piece I used mostly diamond shapes in some of the colours seen in the artwork. Various mediums ( 3D Stamping Paint, Pan pastels, Silks Acrylic Glazes, and Primary Elements artists pigments) were smooshed onto black cardstock and then cut out. The image I used, called 'The Star Lighters',  has come from an old decoupage book and mounted onto punched card stock. The poem, 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' was torn from an old poetry book, edged with 3D Stamping Paint and mounted onto an acrylic background. This background had been  put through a ray patterned embossing folder.

 

 

To complete the layout I used Kindyglitz and added 'diamonds' in a ray pattern.

Thank you for stopping by. Remember we'd love to see you come and play with us.
Cheers, Di

FLIPPIN' OVER CHRISTMAS

Hi and welcome. You could take this title in a number of ways (depending on mood). However, I have made a tag, with a Christmas theme.
First, I used a Petaloo magnetic tag for the base. This is a deep chocolate brown which is great as a base colour to give additional depth. I'll apologise here for the quality of the photos.. really should have done them in natural light so that the true colours were more obvious (NOT !! at 1.00am!!)

 

This was painted liberally with Collage Pauge, and TH tissue paper was adhered to it.

 

 

After this I used a chevron stencil and white gesso to create a background. With the stencil in place I spritzed with glimmer mists  and then removed the stencil and left everything to dry.

 

 

 

 

 

When dry, Inca Gold (soft gold and apricot) were rubbed in.This gave the tag a beautiful pearly finish, while still allowing the chevron pattern and sprayed colours to still be seen.
Inside the tag I glued on paper strips,and fabric pieces, again with the Collage Pauge.These were tidied up before the edges were covered with paper tape, again smooched with Inca Gold.

 

 

A paper doily, smooched with a chocolate coloured Inca gold and a die-cut strip of paper was used to frame a vintage image. A Christmas poem torn from an old poetry book completed this section, together with a die-cut and embossed bauble (foil paper).

 

 

 

                                      

 

 

A dove was die cut and embossed from pearlised cardstock. Pan Pastels were applied to sections and the whole piece lightly spritzed with biscotti Perfect Pearls.When dry, some sections were highlighted further with Inca Gold. A piece of ribbon was threaded through the cardstock to form the basis of a very retro choker. Miss Bird was certainly getting into the Christmas spirit with her choice of jewels to adorn herself. A Christmas tag, again a deep chocolate brown,  salvaged from an old 
Kaiser craft range and some lace completed the front. Rayon ribbon was coloured using distress inks, and used to complete the tag.

Thank you for looking. I'm entering this piece into:
http://anythingbutacard.blogspot.ca/  where the team members were getting into the holiday spirit.

and  http://ourcreativecorner6.blogspot.com.au/ where the team was looking for a vintage Christmas, with no red  or green.This is a first visit to this blog challenge.

Have a happy and safe Christmas. Cheers, Di

IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS.....

...... on ev'ry site you see!!!!

Including Pixels and Paper for this month's challenge.
This month we have a vintage Christmas photo for your inspiration, so we would love to see your project based on an aspect of Christmas shown here. You have until midnight, 5th January to submit your creation, so we hope that this gives you plenty of  time to enjoy the festive season with family and friends and hopefully finding  some crafty time for yourself.

Pop over to:http://pixelsandpaperchallengeblog.blogspot.com.au/ to see what the team has produced for this.
This is my DT piece for the challenge. I focused on the stockings and used this concept as a centrepiece for my layout. This was done with iris folding.

 

On the background I've also stamped a Christmas ornament topper  (Chocolate Baroque stamps) with versamark, then heat embossed it  and added braid so that it looked like they were hanging.
The inspiration photo also reminded me of my childhood when many of the decorations for the house and the tree were handmade. I remember making strings of bells from milk bottle caps, washed, turned inside out and moulded into bell shapes over a lemon juicer. We also made paper chains from cut up cards and crepe paper.
For this memory, I chose to make the ornaments from stamped foil paper, (Chocolate Baroque stamps)  and again heat embossed the design. This gave them the look of some of the gorgeous decorations that were always packed away carefully each year. The idea of stamping and cutting out the ornaments was the result of a play day at Julie's at: http://timetocreate-handmadetreasure.blogspot.com.au/


                                                 

Some close-ups of the ornaments. Sorry about the blueness of the background. In trying to get the detail of the ornaments to stand out more, the background was brightened a wee bit too much. The photo below is more of the real colour. Sentiments are Words from Darkroom Door.

 

The photo of our son taken in 1990 was framed with foil paper, smooshed with 3D Stamping Paint. Journalling has been done on tags popped into the folds of the stocking.

 

On the base I've placed a strip of "Merry Christmas" words in  various languages  (Graphic 45). I played with some soft metallic silver Pan  Pastels and 3D Stamping Paint on this strip.

Thank you for visiting and please pop on over to Pixels and Paper to have a peep. We'd really love it  if you decided to have a play with us.

Cheers, Di