Christmas Is Coming by Amanda Southern

 Hi Everyone

This weeks project isn't me getting organised for the arrival of Christmas, I am sure, as has been with every other year, that I will enter the mad panic of Christmas card making in December. It is one of the samples that I made for the That's Crafty! launch of Christmas in July for Hochanda. 

The MDF tags I have created on are a recent addition to the That's Crafty! MDF Surfaces and have you seen that the holes have either a star, tree or snowflake. If you recognise the stencils it's probably because these designs were originally in the Dinky format but are now available as a 6" x 6" version.

Here's What I Did:

I began by stencilling through the 3 different Christmas themed stencils using That's Crafty! Texture Paste directly on to the MDF surface and left them to dry. Once dry and having chosen my choice of That's Crafty! Multi Surface Paints, those being my 2 favourites Christmas Red and Teal along with Sandstone, I painted over each of the tags including the paste. Again these were left to dry but I helped this process with a heat gun, these paints do dry really quickly but as I was going to sand them I needed them to be absolutely dry so the heat gun helped with that. I then sanded over the top of the stencilled area, the Texture Paste is easy to sand, removing the paint from on top of the Texture Paste, I wanted a distressed look so made sure that some of the paint remained. I also lightly sanded around the edges of the tag to reveal the MDF. I added Vintage Photo Distress edges to colour the exposed MDF and again to give a more distressed look.

The tags, another recent addition to the That's Crafty! Craftyboard range, were painted with the same 3 paint colours, once dry I added the sentiments which are Tim Holtz Christmas remnant rubs. 

With some natural string wrapped around each tag I added the tags so the colours were coordinated. Some natural twine in the top finishes them off. Simple to do but a lovely effect and one of my current favourite techniques.

Here is each of the tags

Here's What I Used:

That's Crafty! MDF Christmas Tags Pack of 3

That's Crafty! Craftyboard A4 Tags Sheet (9 of this size & 8 Larger ones)

That's Crafty! Texture Paste

That's Crafty! 6" x 6" Stencils - Snowflakes, Swirly Christmas Tree & Stags Head

That's Crafty! Multi Surface Paints - Christmas Red, Teal & Sandstone

Tim Holtz Christmas Remnant Rubs from my stash, the Gilded ones though are HERE

Distress Ink Pad - Vintage Photo or similar

Ranger Heat it Craft Tool

Sanding Block

Twine

A simple one from me this week but hope you like it and that it gives you some inspiration for your Christmas makes.

See you next Tuesday

Love

Amanda X