Christmas Village Construction

Would you like to build your own 'Twas the Night Before Christmas Village (see yesterday's post), or just see how it was constructed?

Well, for this project I made a series of videos as I built the project. These videos show the construction of all the parts and pieces that make up the village,

'Twas the Night Before Christmas Village

I've finished my "big" Christmas project just in time, because it is a countdown to Christmas calendar and it is almost December 1st.

The village has 24 buildings on three levels, each one hiding little treats that can be enjoyed as you count down the days until Christmas.  It is 12" x 18".

The project features Graphic 45 'Twas the Night Before Christmas paper collection and Tim Holtz Woodland Trees.

I also made a series of videos as I constructed the project - more on that later.

Dr Dreadful's Apothecary (aka The Wonky Halloween House)

This year’s “big Halloween project”, Dr. Dreadful’s Apothecary, aka the Wonky Halloween House is finally complete.  This project uses one of my favorite Graphic 45 papers - Steampunk Spells.  The idea for the design had been percolating in my mind for a while and I thought there’s no better time to make it happen than Halloween!

ApothecaryTour
Let's start at the front door (although actually it was the last thing to be built because it had to fit in between all the other rooms).

The door itself is almost perpendicular - it might be the only thing that is!  It's made out of chipboard covered with decorative paper and a window cut in it (more on the windows later).

There's a chipboard cutout from the paper collection above the door and a little "poison" symbol hanging from the doorknob.

The columns are made from bubble tea straws covered with cardstock and wrapped with decorative paper at the top and bottom.  The base of each column is a little chipboard cube.

Hanging by the door is a Tim Holtz Mini Lantern - I hope you can see that the light is on!

To the left of the door you can see the front parlor with its shingled roof.  It's a little hard to see but there is a light in that window.

Halloween Treat Jars

This weekend my niece and I finished up a quick Halloween project - these treat jars.

We got the idea and instructions from one of Joggles Mid-Week Muse videos.  If you are not familiar with Barb's videos and you are into mixed media I highly recommend you visit the Joggles site (which is a cool place to shop) and sign up for emails.

Now back to the jars...

We used some very inexpensive glass jars from Michaels - but the beauty of this project is you can do the technique on anything that you can paint.  In the video Barb used Tim Holtz Distress Paint but I didn't have enough for all these jars so we used Golden Fluid acrylics mixed with a little liquid Matte Medium to dull down the gloss.  We first prepared the bottles by coating them with Golden's GAC 200 so the paint would adhere better (something not necessary with the Distress Paint).

We added texture to most of the jars with some light molding paste.