Sunday 30 November 2014

The Funkie Junkie's 12 tags of Christmas 2014 week 9 Jane's Journal style

Here we are at number 9 of this great challenge. Everyone is welcome to join in with The Funkie Junkie 12 tags of Christmas challenge. It closes on 21st December by which time you need to have submitted all 12 creations using Linda's tags for inspiration. You can make anything at all. The full rules are over on her blog here . Linda offers 3 very generous prizes of gift vouchers to spend in her terrific on line shop, The Funkie Junkie Boutique. Do have a look at the link here . I am choosing to make 12 Christmas cards instead of tags.

This weeks tag can be seen here. My first thoughts were how elegant black and gold look together. I decided to use this for my inspiration and also I love the way Linda had used gold embossing on torn vellum, a really cool look. I also was inspired by the stencilling she put underneath it.

So off I went to my garden studio, it is just about OK down there still with my little heater on, to start my card.

I used my Tim Holtz Christmas stencil, pounced some embossing ink through the words and gold embossed some on black card.


I also gold embossed the edge of my background card as it gives such an elegant look.
Next I made the vellum, instead of embossing paste I again just gold embossed using the Festive stencil this time, as Linda had.


I just love all this shimmery gold embossing.  I tore the edges of the vellum and inked them.


I also die cut a large snowflake in gold card and it was then time to put on my creative card.

Here is my creation for week 9. It is very hard to photograph, there is a lot of shiny bling here!


Here are a couple of close ups. I also dotted some little gold stars onto the background paper


The sentiment is a Cheery Lynn die and the gem is from my stash.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges'

The Funkie Junkie 12 tags of Christmas 2014 #9
A creative romance something old my old is my vellum, gem and snowflake die, all bought years ago.
Crafty boots stars
Crafty sentiments use die cuts
Party time Tuesday anything goes
Simon Says stamp Wednesdays anything goes
Creative Inspirations season's greetings
The Artistic stamper Christmas is coming
Cheery Lynn Tis the Season
Fussy and Fancy happy holidays



Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Thursday 27 November 2014

Winter colour

First of all I wanted to thank you all for the amazing reception you gave my Christmas configurations book I showed in my last post. I am so touched by your kind comments. I gave it to my son on Tuesday and he loved it. It has pride of place on his mantelpiece in his living room.

We finally had our first frost of the season on Monday and it was fun to see the leaves with their icy layer in the the garden.

Now that some cooler weather has arrived the trees are at last releasing their leaves and there are piles of golden leaves beneath them. It almost looks as though they have stepped out of their clothes.


The "skeletons" of the trees have started to appear. I always think they look like lungs with branching bronchioles!

and also reveal some secret empty nests. 
Even though the trees are losing their colour there are still some pretty flowers to be seen.
Winter flowering jasmine.....
and berberis.
The pretty viburnum is coming into flower

and some of my favourite berries at this time of the year are ripe and ready to feed the wild life...

holly, in traditional red

and orange
Yes it is only a few weeks until the first day of winter and the nights are starting so early. It is now getting dark at nearly 4pm.
Thanks goodness we have Christmas to look forward to,  it's just 4 weeks today...a beacon of light for keeping our spirits up during these dark, dismal days.

I thought I would share a bright cheerful card today to bring a little sparkle to my post. I was inspired by holly and the red of the berries and went for a very sweet Lili of the Valley stamp for my card.

I love this stamp,here it is in close up.

I coloured it using my Promakers and highlighted with Prismacolor pencils. The holly leaves are Cheery Lynn and the candle die is by Marianne. The sentiment is also LOTV.
I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Lili of the Valley Merry Christmas
Crafty Hazelnut's patterned paper anything goes
The Artistic stamper Christmas is coming
Crafty Little Fairies not a square
Little Claire's shaped card
A creative romance something old my old is my stamp, bought last Christmas
Crafty boots stars
Crafty sentiments use die cuts
Party time Tuesday anything goes
Simon Says stamp Wednesdays anything goes
Creative Inspirations season's greetings

I also chose a cute image as we are looking forward to a super long weekend celebrating our SIL's 30th birthday at the Winter Wonderland at Centre Parcs, Longleat. We are so excited as on Sunday we will be taking Daisy to visit Father Christmas...ho ho ho. I hope to be able to schedule my Funkie Junkie card for Sunday, if I manage to get it made and photographed in time. Fingers crossed.

A very happy thanksgiving to all my friends across the pond, enjoy time with your loved ones,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

Sunday 23 November 2014

A Christmas Tale, Jane's Journal countdown to Christmas 2014

When is a card not a card? .....when it's a book. To explain myself; some time ago I bought a Tim Holtz configurations box book. I have been saving it for a special project. When I saw the challenge "All sewn up" over at A Vintage Journey I decided that it was time to get decorating. I chose to make a very special gift card for my son for Christmas. He is so like me and even at 25 loves everything about this magical time of the year. I realised my box book could become a Christmas card and decoration gift for him all rolled into one.I spent some time thinking about a theme and I decided that it would resemble a cloth bound vintage book on the outside and that inside it could tell a little vintage Christmas story.

 It is also the very last challenge over at Lili of the Valley, who are so dear to my heart. I wanted to make something really special for this too. So this became a special Jane's Journal Tim Holtz and Lili of the Valley vintage fusion.

For those of my blogging friends who have no idea what a configurations box book looks like, here it is in its raw undecorated state. 
It has little compartments which you can decorate as well as a "cover" to make it look like a book from the outside.

I made the very brave decision to not only decorate the inside but also to make a cover for the outside which would resemble a vintage cloth bound book.

 I suggest you grab a cuppa at this point or pop back when you have some more time as this is a very picture heavy post.

Firstly to make my box look more like a book I added some acrylic paints to texture paste and covered the top and side to look like book pages.

I spread this down the edges with a palette knife and roughened it up a little
When it was dry I also added some gold gilding wax.
To make the "cloth" covers I decided to first paint some printed papers with watered down Gesso. When Gesso dries it gives the paper a very different, almost material feel to it. I added some festive stamping, some stenciling and lots of Tim's Christmas remnant rubs. I love these as you get a black and white sheet in the pack. 
Here is part of the back cover showing my "gilded "pages. I also distressed them to give even more of a vintage feel
and below is a close up of the back cover.

Here is the front cover. I added lots of stencilling too. I also altered some silver metal menu holders with Distress Paint and added them as book corners.
You can also see that I tried to make the binding look like material. To do this I embossed some green card and added it as a spine for the book, with plenty of distress ink and gilding wax to "age" it. I added Remnant rubs to look like the title of the book.
and here is the book opened out.


For the inside cover I die cut my Cheery Lynn Merry Christmas sentiment as I shall write in this for my son.
I added some distress glitter for even more texture.
Above is the inside page, I used Astrid's free Santa download for this page from her blog, thanks Astrid.
So having made my "cloth" book covers, which I will confess took a lot of time and patience, it was time to think about what to put inside.
I had bought some fun wooden pieces which I thought my son would like. I then had to decide the arrangement of my little boxes.
I made some tiny little parcels which I wrapped with Christmas paper and tied with gold sewing thread. I altered the deer with metallic distress paint and I hand sewed a little hessian sack and made a little draw string for it with embroidery cotton.


I also made a little wreath, using the TH garland wire below which I stitched together and added some bells and ribbons to...you will see this later.

Now my son is not really into LOTV cute fairies so I chose an image from their great Christmas eve art pad. 
I chose the bottom image from this page to use as the main Christmas scene. My son loves snowmen so I thought this one would be perfect to use. I also thought that the cottages already gave me an idea for a little Christmas story to tell with my artwork. 
My whole theme of my "book"is a
of a  vintage childhood Christmas.

So I then spent hours creating all these little boxes, each one is a special scene.
So how about a peep inside then........
I shall open up the pages.............and tell you a story..........

Come on in...............
Once upon a time one snowy Christmas Eve, in the village of Deepwish stood a snowman. Deepwish was such a pretty little village with cottages all lit up in the darkness by golden lights shining from within. Roaring fires inside added to the cosy glow. The snowman had been made by the children that afternoon. They had given him a hat and scarf which he wore with pride.  The moon had already risen into the inky sky lighting it up like a little beacon.

The snowman had a friend called  Leaping Deer who reared up with excitement as they watched the children excitedly taking their sledges home. Their shrill young voices could be heard ringing like bells through the still cold air. It was nearly time for Father Christmas to make his annual visit on his sleigh with his sack of presents bulging to the brim. The children hurried home eager to get to bed and await his arrival.
No one in Deepwish could ever remember the snow being so deep, it glinted in the moonlight like thousands of diamonds.

Daisy Harper was 7 years old and lived at Holly cottage. She knew that the deep snow would make a soft landing for Rudolf as he led his merry band of reindeer that night. It would be hard to hear the hooves on the roof, even if she managed to stay awake. 
 There were decorations up all around her home; lots of Christmas cards and in pride of place in the parlour was the Christmas tree with a special magical blue star at the top. She had stood there that evening and made a special wish before she kissed her parents goodnight and they tucked her into bed.

Daisy knew that tonight was such a magical one. She had written her list, using her favourite ink pen, to Father Christmas and sent it up the chimney a few weeks back. She knew that  if she had been good girl all year perhaps he would visit her and leave a present or two..........

As the clock in the hall struck 12 there was a gentle thud on the roof of Holly Cottage. There was also the sound of jingle bells and the crunch of boots walking through the snow. With a sparkle of magic dust a jolly face appeared and  smiled at the sight of the sweet sleeping girl. Shhhh, don't wake her...Father Christmas had arrived...Sweet dreams little Daisy and Merry Christmas. It looks as though all your Christmas wishes will come true  xxxxxxx

The End

I hope you enjoyed my little Christmas tale ;0)

Here are a couple more shots of the inside scenes

The Father Christmas image is by Nicecrane Designs. I also reduced a couple of images to 1cm size and made the tiny Christmas cards. Ignacio has lots of wonderful vintage Christmas designs. The tree is a Tim Holtz tree which I altered with Dylusions spray ink and I added some sewing thread as tinsel and gems as baubles. 
The icicle border is Cheery Lynn cut with a shimmery white card stock. The holly and Santa sleigh are also CL and the branch is Marianne.
The charms and corners are all from my jewellery making stash.

I absolutely loved making this piece and I have put lots of love into it for my darling son for Christmas xxx

It's his card and decoration for this year...all sewn up ;0)

I would like to enter my box card into the following challenges;

A Vintage Journey all sewn up
Lili of the Valley Merry Christmas
Sparkles Monthly The big guy aka Santa
                               Mixed Media Monthly stamps I have used lots of stamps to make the covers of my project
                                                         Divas by Design let it snow
                                               Frilly and Funkie a gift from the heart
                                                              Bunny Zoe snow
                                 Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas getting ready for Christmas
                                    Rhedds Creative Spirit mixed media anything goes
Pan Pastels UK cold and frosty colours

It has been such a dismal, wet day here. I hope that my little tale has put a smile on your faces. Enjoy your Sunday evening. 

Back soon,

Bye for now.

Jane x