Christmas Eve
Welcome to my last DT post for the year. Since I’m guessing you’ve got all your Christmas cards made already, I thought I’d share an idea for a Christmas decoration instead. Light-up festive pictures are all over the place in the garden centres but it’s quite easy to make your own. I used a 18cm x 18cm shadow box frame with a mount that gave a 15cm x 15cm aperture.
As I wasn’t going to cut any holes to let the lights shine through, I used a piece of heavyweight vellum (200 gsm) instead of card to build the scene. The large circle stencil from Bubbles & Fizz was perfect for the moon so I attached it to the vellum using some washi tape and ink blended the sky. I used Distress Oxides and started with Salty Ocean around the moon and above the rooftops, then moved on to Prize Ribbon, Chipped Sapphire and Villainous Potion to get darker as I went up the page. Lastly, I went around the edges with some Black Soot Distress Ink.
For the distant rooftops, I used the Christmas Eve stencil and Black Soot Distress Ink. The stencil is smaller than the vellum square so it had to be repositioned. I used sticky notes to mask other areas of the stencil. It’s important that this inking is dry before moving on to the next step.
The closer rooftops needed to be darker so, after turning the stencil over to get a different profile, I blended black ink through the stencil and immediately added black embossing powder and heat set. Again, this process had to be repeated to complete the panel.
To
give the moon a little texture (thanks to fellow DT member, Jane Tyrell, for this top tip!), I first protected the surrounding area with the
Bubbles & Fizz stencil together with some sticky notes, the used the Lava
stencil and lightly blended Weathered Wood Distress Oxide over the moon.
The sleigh and reindeer were then stencilled using black ink and I added silver embossing powder and heat set. When using vellum, the ink doesn’t dry very quickly so you don’t need to use a sticky ink like Versamark when heat embossing, a regular ink will do.
I watered down some Dr Ph Martin bleedproof white and spattered for snow. I realise that if it was snowing, it wouldn’t be a clear night but I wanted a little more interest in the sky. If it bothers you, the moon and rooftops could be masked before spattering and then the white could be stars instead. I used a glue pen to adhere some ‘snow’ glitter to the rooftops.
Lastly, I arranged a 20-light string onto the back panel, adhering the bulbs using glue dots. The wire needs to be laid flat on the board as if it pokes up, it’d be visible through the vellum.
To assemble the frame, I layered it as follows: mount, vellum, MDF spacer then the back panel with the lights. The control box fitted nicely in the recess of the frame and was also held in place with a couple of glue dots.
The finished frame looks great in either state. Unlit…
Or lit…
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