Guesting at SimonSaysStamp Monday Challenges - Week 3

Hi, servus and welcome to my third appearance over at SimonSaysStamp's Monday Challenges  where I am invited to guest as their ...

...this month - which is really an honour and also great fun. ;)


And like every Monday at SimonSaysStamp...

"Home Decor" 

is this week's challenge theme 

...and those who know me, know that I love to hunt dollar stores and sales sections of home decoration shops after Christmas (well, honestly all year long but especially after Halloween and Christmas) for cheap left over decoration pieces that can be used as substrates to create altered projects, customised home decoration pieces (and whatever else my mixed media mind can come up with) from. Especially wooden or MDF shapes are great to work on because they can take a lot of mixed media, paints, inks, pastes and other cool stuff ;)

Winter has just gotten into full swing over here in Vienna and is on to stay for about one and a half more months - so a little piece of home decor that adds some shine to the short days and light to the early, long dark evenings is always a good thing to have.

This little starry winter forest scene I've made is sitting on my writing desk and warms my heart whenever needed ;)

Except from the MDF star shape (that's one of my finds from mentioned dollar store) all the items and products used to create it can be found in the SimonSaysStamp online store. To get to the particular item on their shop site, simply click on the items' names in this post.

The original look of the star wasn't thrilling (at least not for me),

so I started with covering up the printed quote and stars with two thorough layers of "Chalk" PaperArtsy Fresco Finish chalk paint. After that had dried, I picked the stars stencil from the Tim Holtz Mini Stencil Set #43, a stencil brush and some Distress Paint "weathered wood" and added my swirling stars to the primed star as shown in the picture below.
(if you look closely you will see that I got a quite smudged result - so I re-did this step on a newly added layer of chalk paint until I got a crisp stencilled image).

The star's edges were inked with gathered twigs Distress Ink, using the mini ink blending tool.

I had planned to glue two of my sisal bottle brush trees and two of the gorgeous Tim Holtz decorative deer and a tea light "holder" to my star shaped base, so I browsed my collection of tea lights to find one that had a slightly larger cup so I could place a real or LED tea light into this cup (to keep it in place safely).

I didn't like the feet of the sisal bottle trees though, so I decided to replace these with two of Tim's  idea-ology Wood Slices Findings. I used some tweezers to get the trees out of their original sockets and a hand drill to drill two tiny holes into the wood slices - then the trees were simply glued in place using Tacky Glue. The deer were glued in place by applying tiny dots of the Tacky Glue directly to their feet and then putting them in their spots and letting them sit until the glue had dried. The trees were glued in place using Tacky Glue as well, but I used a Sticky Thumb Adhesive Foam Dot to glue the "tea light holder" in place, so I could easily replace it if needed.

But first I covered the blank dull metal of the tea light cup with some decorative Cork Washi Tape.

As I wouldn't dare leave my little "forest scene with tea-light" unattended when using a real tea light, I decided to use an LED tea light instead for everyday use. Luckily that fit into the holder just perfectly. Yay!

Finally I decided to add a bit of bling to my forest scene, so I glued the gold glitter Washi Tape from the Tim Holtz "Travel" Design Tape set around the star's edge (well, actually it was the gold washi tape from the "Aristocrat" set, but the Travel set has it too and is in stock in the store).

I love the simplicity of the make - this way the focus is all on the gorgeous deer, the trees, the stencilled on stars, the golden edge and the tea light.

And it definitely spreads a lot of cosiness when lit in a not-so-well lit room! ;)

I hope you like it too!

I can't wait to see what you will create and enter to the "Home Decor" Monday Challenge this week!

By playing along you get the chance to win a 

to spend in SimonSaysStamp's amazing store! 

Thanks for stopping by

and good luck!

Claudia

xxx

Something New - Guesting at the SimonSaysStamp Monday Challenge

Hi, servus and welcome to the first of four special posts and projects I am sharing this January as their Spotlight Guest Designer after being spotlighted back in November with my "Under the Light of a Full Moon" project! Shortly afterwards I was invited by lovely Lols to guest this January and share four projects throughout the month linked to their Monday Challenges.

"Something New"

is this week's challenge theme and by playing along you get the chance to win their fab 

to spend at their online store! How cool is that!?

As Christkind has brought me the awesome "Alpine" Tim Holtz dies set I had wished for I immediately knew I had to have and use it for my first guest project and create a little typical Austrian alpine themed card, showing a typical Salzburg style Villa surrounded by the Alps of course and the typical landscape with a mix of forests, mountains, fields and meadows with lots of fruit trees. Because as an Austrian gjrl I grew up spending all my summer-, my skiing-, many autumn- and sometimes even Easter-holidays in the Alpine regions around Salzburg - which was the home of the Trapp singer family whose story was made famous by the musical drama movie "The Sound of Music".

And of course there also had to be some yodelling!!!! 

It's an "all Tim Holtz - make" again and what is also "something new" for me is that I've made a card (as I am not really a good card maker and therefor don't do a lot of these) and that I have discovered that using Tim's Distress Oxide Ink pads to colour my die cuts and create my background with has turned card making into something really pleasurable for me!!! Thank you, Tim! ;)

Maybe you have already guessed which of his dies sets I have used to create my Salzburg style villa and the sun...

...right! It is one of the houses from the adorable "Ghost Town" dies set!

I just had to "invent" the typical Salzkammergut style shutters that on traditional houses and villas are always painted in a very special and typical green. So I die cut the house three times using the first die cut as my main house, the second to cut the window frames with shutters from and the third to cut out a roof from. I used the second die cut to draw a door, the window frames and shutters using a fine tip marker and then fussy cut along the drawn lines using my tiny detail cutting scissors.

Et voilá!

I also kept the left over from one of the house die cuts to roughly trace its inside on a piece of black card stock to cut into shape and glue behind the house.

The traditional Salzburg villas and houses are painted in a warm yellow, so I used Distress Oxide Ink fossilized amber to colour the house front, fired brick to colour the roof and peeled paint for the door, window frames and shutters. I applied the Oxide Inks with the round Ranger mini ink blending tool.

Next I die cut the alps and coloured the mountain base using peeled paint Distress Oxide Ink with traces of Distress Ink gathered twigs on top.

The die cuts' edges were all blended using gathered twigs Distress Ink as well.

The snow covered mountain tops were blended using Distress Ink pumice stone.

The die cuts that form the shadier areas were given two additional layers of pumice stone on top.

Time to glue everything together! I made sure the shutters didn't get glued on as well so I could fold them a little for more dimension.

The next step was to build the landscape with the pine and fruit trees. I used my little Sizzix Sidekick directly on my glass media mat and die cut the three trees from the Alpine set and the skeleton tree from the Ghost Town set using white card stock.

Distress Oxide Ink peeled paint and Distress Ink gathered twigs were once more used to colour these.

I also layered some Distress Oxide Ink broken china on top to get a different green as I had on my mountains.

The skeleton tree was done using Distress Ink gathered twigs.

I smudged some of the broken china Oxide Ink onto my glass mat and spritzed it with a little water. Then I used a detail brush and the ink on my mat to paint the window panes.

I needed a sun to shine bright on my card and searched for a dies set to cut that from...and stumbled across my also new Tim Holtz "Snowy Stars" dies set. It has four stars in it and by layering these I could create a beautiful sun for my blue alpine region sky.

I used fossilized amber Oxide Ink again to colour the die cuts and then stacked three of the largest and one of each of the smaller stars.

The background was quickly done using Distress Oxide Ink peeled paint and Distress Ink gathered twigs again. I used a sheet of paper to mask the sky area while I blended the lower section with the inks using the blending tool again.

Next I masked the lower area and did the sky using Distress Oxide Ink broken china. This time I added some sprinkles of water to create some "cloud-like" patterns.

Using Tim's Alphanumeric Classic Upper and Alphanumeric Classic Lower dies sets I die cut my yodler from some left over linen card stock. It didn't matter it was blue as the opaque Distress Oxide Inks have good coverage so I could turn the blue letters into red ones easily using fired brick Distress Oxide Ink on them.

Finally time to assemble my card!!!! I like to use a fine detail brush and diluted tacky glue from my palette on the glass media mat to glue tiny bits into place.

Done!

I really love how my card turned out! It definitely has the feel of a typical warm spring or autumn day somewhere in the Salzburg or Salzkammergut region...a clear blue sky with just hints of clouds, a hot sun, ...

...some snow still or already covering the peaks of the higher mountains,...

...the lovely yellow villas and houses with their green shutters...

 ...and forest, green meadows and fruit trees everywhere you look.

               

                                              eeeee-

                                deeeeeeee!!!!

                           Yodel-lay-

Honestly, I do not really yodel - but I remember we sang some songs at primary school and also later when I was in a large women's choir, that have a kind of yodelling in them...it was rather the holler-ay-dee-ree-ay-holller-ay-dee-ree stuff, but it wasn't sung in real yodelling technique (which is really special and not my favourite). But it is a "legal" kind of yodelling as well over here and there are some really beautiful Austrian folklore songs that have this kind of slow "dyo-dyo-ee-ree" sung parts in them that are prayer yodlers and these are really beautiful.

I hope you liked my truly Alpine card (and the little yodelling lesson) and I hope to see you again at the start of the next Monday Challenge over at SimonSaysStamp Monday Challenges!

Check out the fabulous makes of the design team, get inspired and have fun playing along! 

Hugs and happy crafting! 

Claudia

xxx