Christmas Wishes ~ Stamps and Stencils ~ New Challenge.

Hi everybody, It's my turn to host our new challenge over on the Stamps and Stencils blog. I've called it 'Christmas Wishes'. Whether it's cards, decorations, giftwrap or gifts, I'd like to see what you've been making, that is as long as it includes some stamping, stenciling or both. I've put into practice a few things I've learned over the last couple of weeks at workshops with The Ministry of Mixology team, and Finnabair, and created this Christmas wreath. I started off with a greyboard circle and covered it with crumpled tissue paper, as taught by Mark Gould.....

I then painted it with  Decoart Pthalo Blue Media Paint and dry brushed the surface with white gesso....

I then attached a selection of embellishments, including one of Tim Holtz's cute little reindeer heads, using extra heavy body gel. I then sprayed the surface with Cosmic Shimmer mists......

This is a technique we used on Finn's workshop. Once the cosmic shimmer was dry, I dry brushed the surface with gesso.....

This is how it looked after the first coat. I continued to build up layers of gesso, dry brushing and drying between each coat.

I found that the Cosmic Shimmer was very strong and kept coming through the gesso. After several coats, I decided to put on a coat of matte varnish in order to seal the surface. This worked well and I was then able to achieve the effect I'd envisaged. Once this was dry, I added some additional pearls and gems and finished with a dusting of glitter. Here are some close up shots.......

and.....

and finally that cute little deer......

I hope you can find a few spare moments to join in with our challenge. You can hop over to the Stamps and Stencils blog with this link, where you'll find the challenge details and see some fabulous projects from the rest of  our very talented team. x