That's Crafty!: Happy Holidays by Amanda Pink

Hi Everyone and Welcome

Happy December!

I'm still in 'seasonal' creativity mode and have this week created a wintery tag to share with you today that has a That's Crafty Craftyboard sprig of snow sprinkled holly and glossy berries as the focal feature set upon a crackled background.

The tag itself is a That's Crafty's white greyboard tag and I worked directly onto the tag.

To create the crackled background I used PaperArtsy's Crackle Glaze. This is a 3 step crackle so the crackle glaze is used in between two contrasting colours of paint. You could use any 3 step crackle glaze and any paints and colours of your choosing. The paints I used were PaperArtsy Frescos, the colours: White Fire (which is a metallic) and Snowflake.

Here's the process steps and these steps generally apply for most 3 step crackle glazes including That's Crafty's own Crackle Glaze which I would have used but sadly my stash is lacking!

Paint the tag with the 1st colour paint. For me it was White Fire Metallic Fresco. Dry.

Apply the crackle glaze over the paint. You can apply with either a brush, a sponge or spatula. You can either leave to air dry or this Crackle Glaze can be dried with a heat tool. I left to air dry.

When completely dry apply the second colour over the glaze. For me it was Snowflake fresco. Try to apply your paint in one direction and with single strokes/ sponging. As soon as you apply the second colour the cracks will start to form so don't be tempted to rework that area thinking you missed 'a bit' as this tends to stop cracks from forming.

The close up photo below was taken just as the cracks began to appear. Following photos will show you the cracks once the 2nd layer of paint had dried and the cracks had fully developed.

The focal featured sprig of holly and berries is from That's Crafty's Craftyboard sheet 'Holly and Mistletoe'. It was painted with PaperArtsy Frescos and Dina Wakley Heavy Body Acrylics using traditional holly and berry colours: PaperArtsy Gumboots, Beanstalk, Hyde Park for the holly, Chocolate Pudding, French Roast for the sprigs and Dina Wakley Ruby for the berries.
I added some detail to the holly leaves and caught parts of them with grit paste to give the impression of fallen snow.

While some white paint splatters created the effect of falling snow

I gave each of the rich red berries a wintery glossy sheen with some drops of Glossy Accents.

Almost forgot to mention the 'broken' stamping detail I added to the crackle background. For this I used a Tim Holtz background stamp 'Holiday Type' with Vintage Photo Distress Archival.