Sellotape Snowman

Hello all!  It really is nearly here now... how's everyone doing?


I've got a bit of decorative recycling for you today.  If you use up all your sellotape as you're wrapping presents, whatever you do don't throw away the inner cardboard circle.  Look what you can do with it instead!


I'm really happy with this dangling decoration, full of snowy sparkle, pinecones and cinnamon sticks, berries, rusty wire, and of course that delightful "vintage" snowman figurine.
















I've always hung on to the leftover reels from my parcel tape, sure that they would come in handy craft-wise one day, but this is the first time I've found a use for one.












I started by giving it a good coat of white paint to give me a nice blank canvas, and then set to with the DecoArt chalk paints and crackle glaze.














As you all know, I love a bit of crackle, and this has plenty of it both inside...















... and out.  I think it's Relic (a soft grey) on the undercoat and then Everlasting (white!) over the top of the crackle glaze.  And that's not inking on the edges of the frame, that's rust from when I was wrapping it round - genuine distressing!













Painting the snowman himself was a little fiddly, but worth the effort...













... especially once I'd sanded back the Fresco paint in places to give it a chipped look, and added a coat of Distress Dry Glitter for that vintage sparkle.  















I used matte medium to glue it on, but rubbed some of it off for a worn look in places.













He gleams beautifully in the sunshine.  (It was honestly not summer when I took these pictures - just the one sunny day we've had in the midst of ceaseless rain lately and a non-deciduous bush in the background of some of the photos!)
















He's even sparkly round the back!














I cut some planks of scrap cardboard to create the platform for him to stand on, and then added DecoArt Snowtex all over them, except where he needed to be.












The Idea-ology trees have had a few spritzes of Pumice Stone Distress Spray (I wanted to stick to neutrals with just that pop of red, rather than go for the full on green) and then a dry-brushing of snow white on the tips of the branches.













I snipped off the wooden bases so that I could stick the wire trunks directly into the cardboard planks.  Thankfully I remembered to make the holes for them before the Snowtex set solid.














I think it would still have been possible to get them in, but it would have been much harder work!















I knew from very early on that I wanted to include some festive gatherings - pinecones and berries, and maybe a cinnamon stick for good measure.












I just had to figure out how to attach them whilst making it possible still to hang up my decoration.

Rusty wire to the rescue!















It took a couple of goes of twisting it around the sellotape circle to get it in place as I wanted it.  It goes round the outside and then around the top edge of the frame a couple of times before looping over the top of the pinecones for the hanger part.














It needed plenty of Liquitex Heavy Body Gel Medium to glue down the pinecones and berries in place as the surface was quite bumpy what with all the wire!












I'd picked up these lovely frosted berries just a couple of days earlier in The Range.  They come on brown stems which echo the rusty wire beautifully once they're all twisted and gnarly.














Here's that extra loop of rusty wire over the top so that you can hang the whole thing up.















I gave myself another tricky photography session with this project, of course - and it was a windy day too, despite the sunshine!  Trying to get the thing to stay still was quite the game.

















But if it does revolve all the way round, at least the view is pretty good from the back too.

For once there are no words on this project - but maybe once a year that's okay, don't you think?  (The last one I can remember that had no words at all was Walking in a Ginger Wonderland, three Christmases ago - but feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong!)

I hope you're all almost ready for the festive season.  I'll be decorating the tree this weekend and baking some Christmas biscuits too, so if I'm not in the mood by Monday, I guess I never will be! 

I'm sorry I'm not a very good visitor at the moment, but things will improve over the festive break.

For now, my friendly snowman and I are wishing the very best of good luck to you all for the final countdown!   Oh, and watch out on Saturday for more festivities over at Cestina's Dollshouses.  See you again soon.

It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
From A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

I'm pretty sure I've used that quote before, but I love it!






I'd like to join in at Try It On Tuesday where they know that Christmas Is Coming
Anything Goes over at Moo Mania & More
At the Creative Artiste Challenge as usual Anything Mixed Media Goes

Under the Greenwood Tree

Hello all!  I'm delighted to be hosting the challenge this month at A Vintage Journey, and I'm looking for Words and Music.  For this challenge we would love to see projects that are inspired by your favourite song or that incorporate musical lyrics or sheet music in their design.

As always, my fellow Creative Guides have created wonders to inspire you, but before you hop over to check them out, let me invite you to come lie with me, under the greenwood tree, and gaze up through the branches at the sky above.  It's a long post, I'm afraid, but I want to remember how I did this!

I'll come clean... Under the Greenwood Tree isn't necessarily one of my favourite songs, but it is by my favourite writer, William Shakespeare.  It also formed one of my earliest encounters with performing Shakespeare.





At school, I was cast as Amiens, the balladeer/courtier in As You Like It, and this was one of the songs I had to sing to entertain the banished court in the Forest of Arden.  It was part of the beginning of a long relationship with Shakespeare, with singing, and with theatre.










I didn't start this page spread with the intention of it being my piece for this month's challenge theme.  I was just playing, starting another background in my Dina Wakley Media Journal.

(You can see some of the other backgrounds taking shape in the recent Birthday Blues and Browns and Greens post.)












I glued down torn paper napkin pieces, keeping a nice crinkled look for texture, and thinking that the daisies would continue to hover in the background (didn't really end up that way, but I don't mind).













I gesso'd over them, and then decided I wanted a bit more coverage so I added a slightly heavier coat of DecoArt paint in Buttermilk over the top.













This ended up being thick enough to do a bit of scratched scribbling in with a wooden skewer... more texture - always welcome here at Words and Pictures.














Next up I dribbled some watercolour inks from the edges inwards.  I used the Avery Elle Liquid Watercolours I picked up with a money-off voucher while I was in NYC.  (They're also in action on the flowery page in the Birthday Blues post.)












I used some of my Daniel Smith watercolours to add darker blue shading around the edges.















And then sprayed Tumbled Glass Distress Spray across the centre section.  I spritzed with water droplets to lift some of the colour for more interest.














Believe it or not, it wasn't until that gentle blue was there that I realised I was on the way to looking up at the sky through the tree branches!














As soon as I worked that out, I started working to intensify the effect.  I added more depth and shading to my branches using some more of the Daniel Smith watercolours.











I used very rough brush strokes, a sort of scumbling action (with one of my cheap Ikea brushes, not one of my expensive watercolour brushes!).  I love that you can still see all that texture, though the daisies are vanishing by this point.













Next up, some stamping using a rather lovely Memory Box stamp called Windswept.














I stamped in Leaf Green Archival (but of course) for that fresh, vibrant, spring green colour.















And, in what became one of my favourite steps, I used my Walnut Drawing Ink and dipping pen to add a little more weight to the branches.














It's a subtle shift, but it really made a difference.  And it was also really pleasurable to do, following the path of the stamped branches, but creating a little more personality with the point of the dipping pen.










By now I really didn't want to interfere too much with the pages.  I had originally had all sorts of plans to layer ephemera and a photo or Paper Doll at the heart of things, along with a sentiment of some kind, but now I just wanted to keep gazing at the sky.

And it may seem a bit slow of me, but it wasn't until now that Under the Greenwood Tree popped into my head, and I suddenly realised I could turn this page spread into my Vintage Journey inspiration piece!







Before I could change my mind, I grabbed my white pen and added the lyrics all the way around the edge of the pages.














And at some point I applied Picket Fence Distress Crayon softly over the textured background, which gave the whole thing a softer, dreamier look.














There was quite a lot of hesitation about the next steps because of not wanting to interfere with the look.  I played with adding the first line of the song to the centre of the page too, using acetate to see what it would look like.









I liked the acetate, but when I wrote it directly on the page it didn't really show so well against the pale blue sky.  Fortunately, I was able to wipe it away and re-spritz with Tumbled Glass, and go back to the drawing board.

Gluing the acetate down might have led to visible glue streaks, and I didn't want to risk that.











So next I tried a version using Dina Wakley's blank washi tape with the words written onto it.  I wanted the words to be there but not there - and I got that, but it didn't really work for me either.













Finally, I decided to take my cue from the words of the song, and add some birds high in the sky.  I was thinking of the Tim Holtz ones but happily came upon these even tinier silhouettes from a Visible Image stamp set called Free Your Imagination.












I didn't want them to be too present, so I stamped them in Pumice Stone and added some clear embossing powder for that shimmering now-you-see-them, now-you-don't effect.













I felt the urge for a few more words so I sought out some Clippings stickers which seemed to fit where my imagination was going, and added them in the corners of the spread.












I used a dark pencil and the white pen to frame and embed them into the pages.  The corners seemed the right place - the words are present, but they don't get in the way of the main gaze, which is skywards, through the branches.

I'm not going to lie... I really like looking at this page spread.  It has a sense of space and serenity about it which make it almost as good as actually lying on the ground beneath trees, gazing at the sky.

Given that it's pouring with rain again as I write this, it's probably a better alternative than doing it in real life!






I hope you'll have time to hop over to A Vintage Journey to see the Words and Music inspiration provided by my fellow Creative Guides and, most of all, I hope you'll be inspired to join us on the journey some time this month to share your own favourite song lyrics and musical delights.  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
            Here shall he see
            No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
From As You Like It by William Shakespeare

I'd like to share this with Art Journal Journey where they have the perfect theme this month: Flora and Fauna

I'd also like to play along at Scrapki Wyzwaniowo where the theme for the month is Blue Sky