Christmas Tree Decorations

Well here we are just 5 days to go till the Big Day---- hope you are all prepared!!! ( I'm not sure there is such a thing as being completely prepared.) Anyway I thought I would share a quick and easy variation of a salt dough that I found whilst searching the internet.

This was an american recipe that was measured in cups so I have converted it to tablespoons which makes it easy to knock up a small batch.

Ingredients

4 Tablespoons Baking Powder

2 Tablespoons Cornflour

3 Tablespoons Water

Mix the 3 ingredients in a saucepan and place on a low - medium heat. This will gradually bubble and thicken to form a stiffish ball similar to mashed potato. Place the dough in a clean bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Leave until cool, a batch this size only takes about 20mins.

Once cool knead until a smooth dough is formed then its ready to roll out. Its best to collect cutters, stamps, inks, baking sheets etc before rolling out. Heat oven to around 170F and line baking sheet with baking parchment.

Once the dough was rolled out I stamped various designs onto the dough before cutting out with different christmas shaped cookie cutters.

I used Archival ink pads as I wasn't sure whether the dye based ones would bleed. After cutting the first batch out I kneaded the remains of the dough and rolled out again. Where there was parts of ink in the dough it made a nice marbled effect.

These small shapes took about 45-50 mins turning over once after 25 mins. This will vary according to the size and thickness of your pieces.

This is how it looks once baked, I lightly sanded the edges to neaten before colouring with various waxes.

On this tree I used Treasure Gold in Ruby and Renaissance and finished with Inka Gold in Platinum.

Its amazing how quickly these shapes transform once you start to add colour.

I am entering these tree shapes into Clarity Stamps monthly Challenge titled 'Trees'

I would like to wish you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year. Hopefully we will meet again very soon in 2015. Take care and thank you as always for stopping by today.

Best Wishes Jane x

"Life is too Short to be Anything but Happy"

Hi everyone and I hope you are all well and are  cheering our team on this evening!!! Todays creation I would like to enter for the Tando Creative Challenge titled " Life is too Short to be Anything but Happy" and if you would like to see the DT examples and the other entries click on the link  http://tando-creative-challenges.blogspot.co.uk

For this card I have used;

Smooth white card

 PaperArtsy Fresco Chalk Paint in Mermaid, Guacamole, Blush, Nougat, Snowflake, Toad Hall, Zesty Zing and French Roast

Tando Creative Stencils; Sequine waste, Bird and Branch and Tornado

Archival ink in Watering Can

Distress Inks in Walnut Stain, Spiced Marmalade and Bundled Sage

PaperArtsy Grunge Paste

Items from Tando Creatives Mini balloons and Mini Houses and Fencing

Treasure Gold in Olive Bronze

Versa-mark ink pad

Yellow Embossing Powder

Orange card for mounting

Clarity stamps Tree and Children dancing

Black Pearl Mica powder

To begin with I coloured the smooth card with the paints using a brayer, then using a stencil brush and the sequins waste stencil added dots to the bottom and then stamped with watering can the wire mesh areas and the script. The sun area was added with the Zesty Zing paint, tornado stencil and a piece of cut and dry.

Once dry I re-laid the tornado stencil at a slightly different angle and with the spiced marmalade ink and a sponge lightly inked through the stencil.

The balloon was coloured using 3 coats of embossing powder and the fencing was painted in the snow flake chalk paint.

Next using the bird and branch stencil I masked off the areas I didn't want to use with some post-it notes, coloured some grunge paste with the toad hall paint and then scrapped the paste through the stencil with a palette knife.

Once dry I added a little bundled sage ink to enhance the colour and then rubbed over with the treasure gold.

The children dancing and the tree were then stamped in the watering can ink and whilst still damp the tree was brushed with the black pearl mica powder.

The words were printed on the computer and then mounted onto orange card.

The balloon then had some thread tied around the end, the length of cotton was then threaded through a needle and passed through the hand of the middle girl and out again close by to give the impression of the string being held.

The picture was then trimmed to size the edges coloured with a black pen and then the whole piece mounted on the orange card.

The edges of the mount and all the edges of the words were then coloured with a black pen.

The fence and the balloon were then secured in place with pva glue.

Well thats it for me tonight, the score at the moment with the footie is 1 all so lets have a big shout for the England team!

Hope you all have a good evening and hopefully see you back here soon for some more creative  ideas. take care and as always thanks for stopping by, until next time bye for now Jane x

Opps England are now trailing 2-1