On the Third Day of Christmas...

Hello!

It's time for the mid-month challenge at Heather Hudson's challenge blog My Artistic Adventures, and the mid-month challenges are geared towards Christmas with the theme being "The 12 Days of Christmas."  Well this being, March, that means it's "3 French Hens," and the requirement, besides using at least one image from Heather's shop is to use three of something on your project. WELL.  I became so involved with my fun project that I FORGOT to use three things!  Yikes!  So... I am lamely going to claim that my sentiment "JOY" on the front satisfies the requirement of three.

Well it does... 

Heather's such a darling girl that she let me slide, but you can bet I'll be all over "Four Calling Birds" next month.

In the meantime, I had a fabulous time making my block!  It started out as a piece of a 4x4 cedar post that I had the home improvement store cut down into 4" square pieces, and I sanded this one until it was silky smooth, rounding the edges and corners for that well-loved vintage look.  Then I painted it red, applied a layer of crackle glaze, painted it with two coats of white (with just a touch of burnt umber mixed in), then sanded that down until parts of the red and cracquelure showed through.  Then I wiped on a thinned burnt umber and immediately wiped it off to give the block the final well-worn look.  I knew I'd succeeded when my husband walked into my craft room and said, "Wow, that looks really old."  YES!

Then I started decoupaging images, all from Heathers store, to the sides.  Well all but the words, those were computer-generated and cut from card stock.

This is the holly cluster from the Vintage Candy Cane collage sheet.  Actually, the cluster is found on the candy canes and I did a bit of fussy cutting to remove the holly cluster.  I also enlarged it a bit using Photoshop so it would fill more space.

Here are two of the candy canes from the same set.  I did a bit of creative cutting so there was only one layer of holly for a cleaner look.  (All collage sheets will be shown below.)

Isn't she just adorable?  She's from the Vintage Christmas Angels collage sheet...

...as is she.  These retro images just warm me to my toes.

While the candy canes and holly were cut out, I tore these angel images around the edges and aged them with distress inks before decoupaging them to the surface of the block.

BTW, all images were printed on plain computer paper which is so much easier to decoupage than heavier card stock is.  Just remember they're also more fragile.

And here are my "threebies."  I spent nearly an entire day trying to discover how to convert true type fonts into stencils so I could cut my own stencils and apply the letters that way, to no avail.  So these are decoupaged on.  

If anyone knows how to convert fonts to stencils or knows of a program which can do it, PLEASE contact me.  I'm nearly ready to pull my hair out.

 Of course I had to elevate the block.  What better way than on jingle bells!  Now it tinkles whenever it's moved.  

And last but not least, I glittered all of the edges and corners with white glitter, the really super cheap kind that looks more like snow than glitter and that I kept planning to discard but never quite did.  I KNEW it would come in handy someday!

Thank you so much for joining me and I urge you to go visit Heather's blog to see what she and the rest of the super talented Design Team have created.  And don't forget to join the challenge! 

Happy crafting!

This item is for sale in my Etsy shop.

Challenges:

Altered Eclectics - Anything Goes
Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas Challenge - March
 
Heather's Collage Sheets: