VINTAGE CHRISTMAS CANVAS AND TUTORIAL FOR MY ARTISTIC ADVENTURES

Hello friends!  Welcome to my blog.

Once again, I am honored to be a guest designer for the lovely and talented Heather Hudson of My Artistic Adventures. The theme of this week's challenge is "On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me ... TWO ..."  emphasis being on Christmas and on the number TWO.

I love Christmas any time of year and making this vintage Christmas canvas for Heather's challenge using her lovely collage sheet was a lot of fun!

I have been working on a project using papers from the Twelve Days of Christmas, so that song has already been revolving around in my head for over a week. So when Heather told me the theme for this challenge, I immediately thought of "two turtle doves".  While the birds I used on my Christmas canvas are not turtle doves, I could not resist the two gorgeous blue birds on Heather's Shabby Vintage Chic Victorian Blue Birds/Music Tags.

(Click on the photo to see this collage sheet at Heather's Etsy Store)

Wouldn't this collage sheet make the most gorgeous Christmas gift tags?  In this tutorial, you will see how to create the tag I used on this canvas as well as the embossed canvas that it is attached to.  So, sit back, relax and enjoy!

1. Place Tim Holtz' Holly Bough Stencil on the right side of a 5x7 canvas. Using something like a hotel room key or an art spatula, wipe Wendy Vecchi's White Embossing Paste (love this stuff) onto the canvas.  Remove the stencil and immediately rinse it and the spatula off.  Gently heat set the embossing paste and repeat the process on the other side of the canvas.

The canvas will then look like this.  Pretty, huh?

2. Paint over the entire canvas using an acrylic brown paint of your choice and mixing it with a little water to dilute the paint just a little bit. I used DecoArt Americana Light Cinnamon. (I did this because I wanted the base of my canvas to be brown).

4. Next add 1/4" Scor Tape to all of the sides of the canvas and then top it with one of the rolls from Tim Holtz' Seasonal Tidings Tissue Tape.  (I used the Scor Tape to help assure that the Tissue Tape would hold.) Then lightly brush a bit of brown paint/water mix on top of the Tissue Tape.

5. Paint Wendy Vecchi's Crackle Texture Paste (love this stuff even more!) over the canvas.  The heavier the coat, the heavier the crackle. Some areas of this canvas are painted heavier than others.  Let dry.

See the gorgeous crackling effect from the texture paste?  The brown will show underneath the crackling.  I also dabbed some of the crackle paste with a paper towel to remove bits of it as I was brushing it on.  To the far lower left, all of the tiny crackles are where I dabbed away some of the crackle paste with a paper towel.  Fun to experiment!

6. Spray the textured and crackled canvas first with Dylusions Vibrant Turquoise and dab off excess with a paper towel.  Repeat until the desired hue is achieved. Then spray Dylusions Melted Chocolate in random areas of the canvas.  Dab off the excess spray.  Repeat if needed.  Heat set the ink spray. Lightly spritz the canvas with Sunflower Sparkle Perfect Pearls Mist.  This will also reactivate the Ink Sprays so heat set quickly.

7.  Using your most sensitive finger (mine is my middle finger) lightly add Florentine Treasure Gold Guilding Wax over primarily the raised areas of the holly and branches.  But also gently add some wax in the low areas of the canvas for added interest.  Also rub some wax on the sides of the canvas.  Then add some Aquamarine Treasure Gold Guilding Wax on the canvas to bring out more of a goldish teal in certain areas of the canvas and sides. 
** Note - if you do not have Treasure Gold Guilding Wax, Rub 'N Buff or even a very light coating of an acrylic paint close to the wax colors would work.  Add some distressing at the edges using Walnut Stain Distress Ink and a touch of Black Soot.

In this photo, you can see the detail of the raised embossed holly and branches, the brown showing through those gorgeous crackled areas and the lovely highlights that the guilding wax provides.

9. Spray a piece of kraft paper with some Melted Chocolate to create a darker background for the sheet music tag to be mounted to.  Here you can see the ink spray on the left side of the kraft paper behind the tag. Dab the excess ink spray and heat set.  (I distressed the sheet music tag with Tea Dye Distress Ink and distressed the edges with a Chestnut Roan Cats Eye Ink Pad.  When I had finished dabbing up the excess Melted Chocolate spray, I lightly wiped the paper towel over the tag and added a bit more brown to it).

10. Die cut a piece of Tim Holtz' Vintage Lace from a piece of plain kraft cardstock.  Rub over it with a Gold Paint Dabber.  Heat set.  Then lightly go over the painted cardstock with Mercury Glass Stickles.  In the photo above, you can see the progression of this step: the far right is plain cardstock, the center has been rubbed with a Gold Paint Dabber and the left side has been stickled with Mercury Glass Stickles.  Let dry.

11. Place the darkened kraft paper behind the sheet music tag and cut out around it, leaving a visible edge.  Using a Tonic Paper Distresser (or scissor edge) distress the edges of all of the two tags and the blue birds post card.  Distress the edges of the kraft tag the heaviest, a little lighter on the sheet music tag and very little on the blue bird post card.  Then distress ink all of the edges using Gathered Twigs or Walnut Stain Distress Ink (or a Chestnut Roan Cats Eye Ink Pad) followed with random areas of Black Soot.  Gently crumple up all of the tags to give a more aged appearance. (That was not done on the kraft tag or the blue birds postcard in this picture).  Add a piece of vintage lace to the bottom of the sheet music tag using 1/4" Scor Tape.  Leave enough lace to turn under on the sides of the tag when they are all put together.

12. Find a piece of paper to create a rosette. In this case, it is a scrap from Graphic 45's Communique papers.  I sprayed over it with a mix of Gold Paint Dabber and water in a mister bottle and heat set.  Then I die cut the largest rosette from Tim Holtz' Mini Paper Rosettes. Use Glossy Accents to glue the two ends together and let dry.  When dry, form the rosette and hot glue the center to the backside of the rosette to hold it in place. Lightly ink the edges of the rosette with a Chestnut Roan Cats Eye Ink Pad and then lightly add Mercury Glass Stickles to the raised folds and the outside edges of the rosette.  Hot glue a little gold tinsel trim to the center and then add the top of the middle of the rosette.  Dab a Gold Paint Dabber over the Tim Holtz Mini Numerals "25" and heat set.  Hot glue in place in the center of the rosette and lightly add Mercury Glass Stickles.  Let dry.

 **Note - after cutting the rosette, add a strip of Scotch Tape on the BACKSIDE of the rosette strip. This will give it more strength on the perforated lines so that the strip won't rip apart when you accordion fold the rosette. 

13. Put the tag together by adding 1/4" Scor Tape to the underside of the sheet music tag and pressing it in place on top of the crumpled kraft tag.  Be sure NOT to flatten the tags.  Just add the Scor Tape around the outside under edges of the tag.  Add the distressed vintage blue bird post card to the top of the tag in the same manner. Turn the Vintage Lace die cut and the vintage lace to the underside of the kraft tag and hold in place with a little piece of 1/4" Scor Tape.  Lightly add Mercury Glass Stickles highlights to the postcard and finish off by adding Xmas Red Stickles to the three holly berries to the left. Let dry.  When dry, punch a hole in the center and add a vintage tinsel tie at the top.  I also added a vintage bell and a small gold jingle bell that I then added Mercury Glass Stickles to. (You can see those in the final project). 

**Note - this would make a lovely gift tag for a Christmas present.  You could also make a pocket tag out of this by only adding Scor Tape to the bottom and sides of the tag or the blue bird post card when stacking it onto the kraft paper tag.  

  14. Add a Tim Holtz Seasonal Word Stick to the bottom of the canvas using twine.  Before I added the word stick, I used a very small amount of Florentine and Aquamarine Treasure Gold to colorize the antiqued silver word stick into more of a gold-ish with a hint of teal metal piece.

15.  Then arrange all of the remaining pieces on the canvas and glue in place.  

First I hot glued the tag in place by gluing the bottom left and top right sections to the canvas; leaving the tag to be raised and crumpled.  Aren't those two blue birds just beautiful?  They are my "surrogate two turtle doves".  

Next I hot glued the rosette in place in the upper right corner. 

Finally, I thought my canvas needed something to the right of the tag, so I die cut these branches from Tim Holtz' Bird Branch die cut onto kraft paper, painted them with a Gold Paint Dabber and then added Mercury Glass Stickles.  (The branches to the left are complete).  Let dry.  

When dry, I cut them into small branches and hot glued them underneath the tag.  I think they add an "airy-ness" to the canvas and delicately fill up that space.

So, did you enjoy my Christmas canvas and tutorial today?  I hope that maybe you learned something about my creative thought process or perhaps a technique or two.  I'm wishing you a happy, healthy week and some time to PLAY! Remember...it's SOUL FOOD! 

Be sure to check out Heather's My Artistic Adventures Challenge and see if you'd like to play long.  Her Etsy store has all sorts of beautiful collage sheets.

I am also linking this piece up to Craft Hoarder's Anonymous Challenge Blog where they are having their first challenge ... Your Style.   There is some awful pretty stuff over there!

Until next time ....