Thursday, December 18, 2014

Holiday Season - AJ pre-launch post #4

So, I gotta tell Ya, this one was tough for me. I haven't really been feeling the usual excitement I get with the holidays. To me it's been a little more like crazy madness. What's mad about the holidays?    What's more mad than all the shopping, and trimming that must be done? This year just seemed like it was all about the crazy.  And so I came up with this!!!


Kinda crazy, right?  But think about it...what makes us the craziest about the holidays???  All the shopping and fighting to find the perfect gift, sale after sale and deal after deal, not to mention hiding the goodies from the kids and finding enough alone time to wrap ONE present, let alone the 30 something hidden thru the house.

Supplies:
Small Dylusions Journal (2 pg spread)
Modeling paste
Acrylic Craft paint
450 glue
sale clip-art from the internet
happy mail envelop cut into squares
sequins
white cardstock-1 sheet...if you do it right, you can get your snow AND your tree from it
rubber stamps - I used a cheap music stamp from Michael's and a Dyan Reavely background stamp
rhinestones
black ink pad
white chalk ink pad
white Signo pen
scissors
UHU glue stick 
tweezers
brayer
palette knife


I began by grabbing 2 shades of green craft acrylic and putting dots over half the cardstock, then blending the colors with a makeup sponge (if you haven't used a makeup sponge for paint application, I highly recommend it.
Classic Green and Thicket
Blended gives you this.....
A big green blob...lol.
Now, I set that aside to dry and moved on to the background...
Black and pool blue...as you can see, I'd already started the background when I realized I'd forgotten to get these 2 together.
Once I had the paint all over the pages, I then mixed in some modeling paste...
Blended it all together, and spread it around across the tops of the pages, to create a textured, stormy sky....
I snapped a closeup of this to show just how much texture a couple of tablespoons of modeling paste can give you...and it's fun to touch once it's dry.
Now back to that big green blob...I cut it out in a rectangle shape, folded it in half and fussy cut it to make this!
Back to the background we go, gluing down the wavy white cardstock  and then gluing down the tree.  Next comes the clip art and the "presents....
Now we're getting somewhere!!  It's really starting to look like a spread now.  So here's where I step back for a minute and take a good look at it...am I happy with the way it's coming along?  Is this going where I thought I wanted to go?  Yes?  Let's keep going, then!

Next, I started decorating my tree....
I used blue sequins for ornaments, then I went to town with a little bling...
Ok, so maybe it was a lot of bling, but hey!  I'm from Texas and there's no such thing as too much sparkle!

Next, I added the music stamp....
And then I started with the white chalk pad and dots all over....
I love this stuff!!!  But if you're gonna use it, be sure to write BEFORE you put it down, because pens don't like it!
Here's the completed spread....and I am pretty pleased with the way it turned out!  
And a close up...

All in all, it really came together quite easily once I had a plan and got going...some of the work was intuitive,  but I went into it with a plan in mind for what to use.

Hope you found this helpful...I had a lot of fun with this one, once I got going....

Catch y'all later!

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