Catch Up!

Between work and family, there was little time to catch up on my own blog, though I spent plenty of time perusing all the beautiful seasonal makes across blog land!

I did get around to making some small things for friends at work, and in the process getting to try new techniques and revisit favorites from earlier projects.  I am catching up on a lot here, so this will be photo heavy.

 I made a little luminary for my friend and colleague Judy.  The windows are acetate covered with frosted film, embossed in a snowflake folder, and then the debased areas were painted with crystal distress stickles to look icy.  I think the structure is made of card spritzed with the new Brushed Pewter distress stain spray.  A variety of Mover N Shaper dies were used to decorate it all, and a small battery-operated tea light was placed inside.  I gussied up the deer with some brown stickles after I took the picture, lol.

Next, I made a card for my Secret Santa at work, Sue.  This tag was to have been my first entry in the 12 Tags of Christmas challenge hosted by the wonderful Linda at the Funkie Junkie Boutique, but as happens, life interfered,  so looking forward to playing along next year.

The hanging lantern is embossed foil.  The holly is cut from the Holly On the Edge die, with Red stickles for berries.  The candle background is specialty paper that I was trying out with the metallic Distress Stains.  The tag itself is Barn Door paint, using the wrinkle free distress technique, and then spritzed with the Tarnished Brass distress stain spray.  The candles have a bit of texture paste dripping down as wax, and the flames were pained with two colors of Maya Gold.  The word is cut from the new Script Holiday Words.

Next up is my first attempt at trying Sarah Allen's beautiful Chocolate Box.  I loaded it with chocolate kisses for my friend and colleague Jeanne.

I used the Royal Peacock gilding flakes from Indigo Blu, using the same beautiful Indigo Blu stamp Sarah uses in her video, on yummy chocolate paper from Stampin' Up.  The top is made from the Snowflake Rosette with the same gilding flakes.

This was so fun and resulted in such a lovely gift in rather short order that I decided to make one for  each of my colleagues on our management team.  These were also filled with a variety of chocolate kisses.

These were stamped on black card stock, using the same stamp but this time with Cosmic Shimmer's Mulled Wine flakes.  The tops are made from the Mini Paper Rosette die.

Ever since I made the birthday book for my friend Janet, I have been wanting to do the weathered wood look again, with a textured stenciled element as demonstrated by Liesbeth.  I have also been wanting to try the mini-album using one sheet of 12 x 12 paper that I read about on Astrid's blog.  I am a great fan of her textured work, and would try some of this in my little book, which I made for my friend and colleague Karita, who hails from Lapland.  The paper I used is from a winter collection from Maja Designs, although most of it is covered by the mixed media techniques!

More gilding flakes at work behind the deer :-)

A textured stencil, with a deer stamped and embossed with antique gold powder.

Another stenciled texture.  The snowflakes were cut from remnants of my lovely gilded paper from my Chocolate Box rosette tops.

I made separate covers of chipboard because of the technique I wanted to use....took a bit of puzzling to figure out how to put the little book in sturdily - not the prettiest thing in the world but live and learn.

All in all - a LOT of fun!  Thanks so much for dropping by -

xx  Lynn