Since it is my week to post a project for Anything But a Card Challenge Blog and the current challenge is “Anything Goes, with a Holiday Twist” I thought these
ornaments I made fit the bill perfectly.
I love to decorate chipboard and book board shapes and I have built up
quite a stash of them over the years.
Classic case of “I like these SO much that I don’t want to use them” - I
am really bad at that when it comes to paper; but I have employed a trick to
make me use it – I just cut it. Even if I cut off a small square, it’s been cut
and therefore loses some of its power and allows me to use it. It seems to work
with other items, too, but instead of cutting, I open the package. Whatever mind games I play with myself, it
works for me! So I tore open my drawer
of shapes and dug right in, determined I was going to use something I had
hoarded.
I searched in the stash and found a pack of Buck Naked
Ornaments from Cosmo Cricket. When I
searched the Cosmo Cricket website, I couldn’t find them, but if you do a
search on the internet, various suppliers will come up. I must have had these things for at least 10
years and had forgotten all about them. I
opened the pack and selected a few of the ornaments and snowflakes to play
with. As always, I gessoed the board before I did anything. As usual, I knew I
wanted to use them, but had no clue as to what they’d become.
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| All gessoed up & ready to party! |
I started the Angel Ornament the week I lost my cat Spike
and before I knew that I’d had to send Boo to join him at the Rainbow Bridge
(for those of you who aren’t familiar with the Rainbow Bridge
click HERE, it will take you to a site where the poem is – but be warned – it
is emotional! You may want to bookmark it and read it after the Holidays!). I first painted the ornament red but I didn’t like it at all. It wasn't a deep red like I wanted, more like an orange red –
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| The red I didn't like |
Blue is one of my favorite colors and JacquardProducts makes the most beautiful blue paint called Lumiere Pearl Blue, so that is what I decided
to use, ditch the red and go with the blue. I painted it and set it aside to dry while I searched for an image to
put inside the circle. I found the
beautiful angel in my pile, and it is actually wrapping paper that I picked up a
while back at the wonderful dollar store.
I cut the image to size. I also
felt that since it was wrapping paper I wanted to protect the image, so I used
my Silhouette CAMEO to cut a circle that fit in the ornament out of acetate. Once my ornament was dry, I glued the image
and the acetate down and covered it with the other ornament. Glued that together and finished off with a
piece of gold ribbon. Now I have a
tribute of my kitties (although I do plan on making something else with their
pictures and names on it). I am very happy with
how this turned out and I have it hanging in my craft room since we won’t be
having a holiday tree. We had decided
that with the kitten (and now 2 new cats - more on them later) having a tree is just too much this year but I will have
one next year!
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| Sorry I didn't take many pictures while making this! |
The snowflake came from the same pack of Cosmo Cricket book
board ornaments. There are few other
snowflake shapes, but this one called to me. Wasn't sure what color I wanted to paint the snowflake, so I dug through my
acrylic paints and found paint by Folk Art called Metallic Champagne – I loved
champagne when I was younger (hic) and I like the subtle sparkle of this paint, so
the red became metallic champagne.
I
often leave works in progress on my tables so I can see them and when an idea
strikes I can work on the project, providing I can find it – my room is
organized chaos, but my two female cats have decided they like to play with my
goodies as much as I do! Because of that, I do have to be careful about what I leave out. I have some
gold ribbon that went perfectly with the pale gold so I wove that through the
snowflake.
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| Please ignore the fact that the snowflake looks like a darker gold |
I loved it, but it needed
some bling. I found a pack of gems by
Darice and I chose to put them around the flake and put a larger one in the
middle. Even though the gems have self
adhesive on them, I always add a dab of glue just to make sure. I feel like the snowflake came out looking
very elegant and it has also has a home in my room, until next year.
Tada! With help from Manny once again, here is my finished snowflake
I hope you enjoyed my ornaments! They were a pleasure to
make – I love to play and decorate naked chipboard - and very easy and fun!
Don't forget to link up your creations to the Anything But a Card blog! It's inspiring to see how everyone interprets the theme and you just might win!
I would also like to enter my creations in the following challenges:
Stampin with the Dragon - Gifts & Ornaments
Crafting for all Seasons - Christmas, Anything but a Card
Rhedd & Rosie Challenges - Use old Stash (the ornaments are at least 10 years old and mentioned in my post)
