A song of Christmas cheer

Hello all!


I'm glad you enjoyed my adventures with Invisible Ink Insects over at PaperArtsy, but now it's time to get back to the serious business of the season... the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas.  I'm on to Tag 4 now.


Music is at or near the top of the list of what makes Christmas for me, so I loved making this one.


I'm always happy to have an excuse for a musical tag, and an excuse to get out the wonderful Victorian Carollers die (sorry, I'm going to spell it the English way with two lls). 













The basic layout follows Linda's charming Tag 4, but I've borrowed one of the techniques from Tag 2 to create my version and gone my own way for the embellishing.













I really loved the stencilled crackled stars from Tag 2, so I decided to create my background that way rather than use an embossing folder as Linda did.















Once they were all crackled, I was able to lay the stencil over the top again and add some colour with Distress Paints and Inks, mixing Iced Spruce and Evergreen Bough.













There's a little bit of text stamping in the background too, following Linda's lead.

I also went with stencilling to add my snowfall.













I used Tim's Speckles stencil and applied DecoArt Snowtex through it.  It's nicely chunky and has a good dash of frosty sparkle to it.













And I added some more snow underfoot with a palette knife.

I cut my silhouettes in brown card and edged them with some Black Soot DI.














I added shadowy shading on the snow under their feet to ground them.  I hope they've got nice warm woolly socks on!












Some Idea-ology ephemera sheet music is there to remind them in case they lose their way in the carol.  

I couldn't resist some more greenery and pinecones for my decoration at the top of the tag... I seem to be completely hooked this year!













There's a festive Muse Token too, and some more of the frosted berries.














Finally, some more of the wonderful Idea-ology Christmas Clippings capture the musical mood.












This was another delight to make - thank you, Linda, for reminding me about the Victorian Carollers... I really enjoy these Dickensian figures - they seem full of character to me.






I hope you've enjoyed singing along with my carollers.  I'll be back with the next tag in the series very soon, and in the meantime I'll try to squeeze in some blog-visiting too.  Happy Christmas-crafting all!

Oh, by the way, for those who enjoy a theatrical extravaganza you might want to pop over to Cestina's Dollshouses - quick now, it's almost time for curtain up!

Christmas now surrounds us,
Happiness is everywhere
Our hands are busy with many tasks
As carols fill the air.
Shirley Sallay

I'd like to enter this as Tag 4 in the Funkie Junkie's 12 Tags of Christmas, sponsored by the Funkie Junkie Boutique
I'd also like to play along at Stamps and Stencils where the theme is Festive Stamps AND Stencils - so for once you need to use both stamps and stencils - I've used a stencil for the crackled holly and the lovely Gothic text stamp with its seasonal font
And I'd like to share it with That's Crafty Challenges where Tis the Season is the theme