I am honored to have the opportunity to be a Words 2 Craft By
Guest I-Teamer.
This month's inspiration quote is from Charles Dickens:
I will
honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
As I thought about this quote, it hit me how much better this world would be if we held the ideas of "Peace on earth and good will toward men" throughout the entire year. To represent this idea, I thought about creating an iconic Christmas image using some vintage monthly calendar pages that I printed from the internet. And that is how my vintage calendar Christmas tree came to be.
The calendar pages were distressed with Tim Holtz's Paper Distresser. I layered them using foam squares to add dimensionality to my Christmas tree.
My vintage calendar Christmas tree ended up on a wooden plaque for my living room. The face of the plaque was painted with a light coats of Bundled Sage, Hickory Smoke and Weathered Wood Distress Paint. I did a light wash of Vintage Photo Stain over this painted wood (rubbing off the excess stain with a paper towel). I added some Black Soot Distress around the edges to accent some of the wood grain (and add some trademark grunginess to my piece). The edges of the plaque got a generous amount of Vintage Photo Distress Stain. I added a wash of Distress Paint over around the edges on top of the stain.
Tim Holtz's new Christmas Alphabet foam stamps (I *love* these stamps!!!) were used to stamp "christmas" at the bottom of the plaque. I used black archival ink and did the first stamping of the word on scrap paper and then did a second stamping on the plaque to give the word a more faded, timeworn feel. The "Merry" is a die cut from Tim's Home for the Holidays die set. I cut it from red card stock and then used Tim's Paper Mosaic Glaze.
I used a sheet of Tim's gorgeous vintage Ideaology Christmas paper for my Christmas tree's background. Reflections washi tape was used frame the paper on my plaque.
Some red alcohol ink, an Ideaology faceted star, and a few "pearls" created some simple ornaments for my Christmas tree.
Here is a closer photo of the completed version.
