Christmas Advent House

As soon as I saw this little beauty complete with instructions and a template on Nichole Heady's blog I new it would be a project in the making for me.

My youngest Daughter Natalie is still at home with us and although she is 17 she still likes to have an advent calendar although she hides it out of sight not to look soft.

The house is a perfect alternative to hiding the advent Calendar what could be nicer than 25 of these little houses hanging from the Christmas tree & each one filled with a favorite chocolate and the doors numbered from 1 to 25.

As you can see I only glued down one side of the roof as I figured a Thornton's Chocolate would fit into the house just nicely.

1 down only another 24 to make.

To see more of Jaks creations visit her at http://crafterskitchen.blogspot.com/

Mixed Media Backgrounds

I absolutely love playing with different mediums and textures to create visually different backgrounds for my cards. This one I manages to create after a series of plays but am very much loving the look of it all!!

You will need –

• Red acrylic paint
• Gel crackle medium
• Light and dark Aqua acrylic paint
• Scrap of bubble wrap
• Red glitter paint or glitter mixed through gel medium
• Flocking (I used an orange)
• Clear transparency or watercolour paper

To create –

Roughly paint a sheet of clear transparency (or acetate sheet as it is sometimes called). It doesn’t need to be perfect as you will be adding to this in future layers. Also, you may prefer to use a heavy watercolour paper, it gives a similar effect but more of a matt finish.

Once dry, add a thick layer of crackle medium and leave until thoroughly dry.

Roughly paint the light aqua paint over the surface, again not being precise or worrying about completely covering the surface. This will add to the effect. Once again, leave to dry completely.Pour some of the dark aqua paint onto a flat surface and dab a section of the bubble wrap into the paint. Blot off any excess then blot randomly over the surface. Leave to dry.Once dry, paint the surface randomly with a glitter based paint. Alternatively you may like to add glitter to some gel medium – this creates exactly the same effect.Finally, while still wet; sprinkle some of the flocking onto different areas of the wet glitter paint randomly. The flocking will adhere to the glitter paint and create an extra dimension to the surface.

Both of these cards have been created using the above technique on clear transparency. For the first I have sewn scraps of patterned paper randomly to the surface of the finished background then torn away the excess.

This last one has been created using watercolour card. As you can see the effect ends up similar but has a more matt finish to it.