Woodgrain Winter Wonderland

Hi Everyone and welcome to my last post of the year, I can simple not believe how quickly this year seems to have gone.  I excited for this month as I love this festive time of year.  For my post this month I have decided to share with you a couple of home decor projects that I have made to display this month.

I had seen the Heidi Swapp Minc Village scene in the shop and I love how it looked.  I do not own a Minc machine but I decided to recreate a a little village of my own.  If you have a Minc this would make such a great center piece for your Christmas display.
I decide I wanted to use woodgrain effect to great my village houses, as you will know from my blog posts I do love woodgrain as a neutral when scrapping 12×12 pages so I decided to look through the papers currently available in the shop.

 
Chickaniddy – 365 – Weekend Wonder Paper
Simple Stories – Pumpkin Spice – Acorn Paper
WRMK – Hello Darling- Gracious Paper
American Crafts Shimelle – Christmas Magic (Out of Stock)
Simple Stories- We Are Family – So Very Loved Paper
American Craft Woodgrain Textured Cardstock – Chestnut

These are a selection of my favourites I love the different stains and both the graphic and photo realistic prints, and I must admit that I do covert these a bit in my collection.  The American Crafts Textured cardstock is such a bargain in the shop and I recommend this as it is a great weight for 3D projects.  I decided to use this for making my houses as it was a cardstock it did not have a white core which would mean I would have to ink all the edges and with some of the cuts this could be very painstaking.

I have been neglecting my Silhouette Cameo so I decided this project would give it a work out that it needed.  I used some beautiful designed cuts from Marji Joy available in the Silhouette design store.  I have the design edition of the software, but you can also do it in the basic version, I split the cuts up so I could use different materials for different parts.

I wanted to go with glitter rather that the foiled look so I used the Heidi Swapp 8.5×8.5 Glitter paper pack to cut out the roof and any chimney stacks to give my village a snowy look.  The contrast between the dark cardstock and the white glitter is beautiful.

The designs are made open at the bottom so you could add a flame-less tea-light for the most beautiful glow.  I must admit this is when this scene comes alive.  I used a selection of bottle brush trees to create my scene,  Fancy Pants have released some cute coloured bottle trees as part of the Wish Season collection and they are simple adorable.



I apologies for the photo heavy post, but I just love how these have come out and they work really well with the rest of the decor.
I also had a couple of the Christmas Paper Grab Bags, these are such a bargain with 20 sheets in.  Although they are older collections its not like Santa goes out of fashion and they are a great boost to my Christmas stash.  I have some of  papers set a side for crafting with my niece this Christmas and some for Cards.  As with a lot of papers the b-side is the one that I love the most and this grab bag had some beautiful plain green and reds and that gave me another idea.
I again turned to my Silhouette Cameo to great another project, and this time it was a wreath.  I am going to admit that it was pain staking to pull all the pine sprigs off my mat, but it was worth it.

I was not going to ink all the edges due to the white core, but I decided to add some texture using mists from my stash.  I just piled them all up and sprinkled over them with some metallic mists to add a bit of glitz.  I left these to dry and the it was time to stick them all on to the wreath shape. I made mine all out of paper, but you could of course use a wreath form for a 3d version.

I added a banner that I cut from  one of the grab bag papers, as this was stretching across the gap in the middle of the wreath I wanted to reinforce it.  I simple cut out two of the same design and layered these together, and this added stability. I added a bit of sparkle by backing the banner with some Heidi Swapp 8.5×8.5 Glitter Cardstock.


I attached this banner on to the wreath, I added some 3D foam to help it pop up a bit.  Then it was as simple as sticking a piece of twine on the back to hang this up, if I had thought ahead I could of stapled this on and then it would have been covered  with the sprigs.

I am really happy how these two projects came out and they are now displayed together on the chimney breast and mantle.
I hope you have been inspired to make some 3D projects to display in your home this Christmas.  I also hope you all have a wonderful December however you celebrate it and that you take the time to capture some brilliant memories.  I will be back in 2016 with some more crafty projects to share with you all.
Happy Holidays