Away in A Manger by Gill Humphrey

For this weeks blog post I decided to embrace the fact that Christmas is only around 8 weeks away and make a Christmas project. I wanted to keep with a rustic theme and so decided to limit my colour palette to shades of brown, a little wax and some antiquing gel in blue and have to say that I am rather pleased with how this piece turned out.  

The base of the project is the Arch Triptych which comes with the jump rings needed to connect the elements together. I started by taking some Artistasoft Airdry Clay and rolling out pieces that were approximately the size of the Amazonia Wood Soft mould and then pushed the mould onto the clay. I then positioned the MDF pieces on top and cut round them before carefully lifting up the shaped clay piece and gluing it onto the MDF base. I repeated this step for all three of the MDF pieces and then set them aside to dry. Once the clay had dried I painted the pieces with Mahogany paint and left it to dry before dry brushing with Ivory paint to bring out the texture of the wood panels. 

My nativity figures were cast with Amazing Casting Resin in the Bethlehem mould. Once set the pieces were primed with Bonding Primer before painting with the Mahogany paint used for the wood panels. The figures were then coated with Turquoise Vintage Patina and the animals and baby Jesus with the Rust Vintage Patina and wiped back to reveal the details. The baby Jesus looked too dark and so I added a little of the White Vintage Patina and again wiped back. Finally I used Gold metallic wax to add more surface details.

I adhered the figures in place with Heavy Body Gel and left that to set before adding splashes with diluted down Indian Turquoise paint before joining the three pieces together with the supplied jump rings.

My keeping the colour palette simple this project is quite quick to do - of course you can go to town with colouring the figurines if you prefer a more vibrant effect the beauty of crafting for yourself is you can suit your own colour palette. For me this simple rustic make was a joy to make. 

I hope you all have a safe and productive week and don't forget that the products used are available on the That's Crafty! website.