Dreaming of a Magical Christmas!

Welcome to Magpieheaven, where I've been getting into the Christmas spirit early for once! I'm not usually the most organized of Magpies and I don't know how long this will last - but - I think it's the discovery of how much fun making master-boards can be that has changed my life! Today I'd like to share a Christmas ATC I've created for a swap and which I am linking to the Artistic Stamper Challenge here. I started with some sheets of card which I painted with Stone PaperArtsy Fresco paint.

I then had so much fun just stencilling and brayering and stamping with inks and paints! I've been enjoying using Jo Firth Young's delightful little mini snowflake stamp for PaperArtsy. It looks magical when used with Snowflake Fresco and enclosed in circles created by lids dipped into puddles of paint!

Stamping with paint creates great effects, but you do have to clean the stamp immediately, as paint dries on very quickly! I also stamped some script from Sara Nauman's Eclectica plate in Snowflake and Archival ink. These sheets are going to be so useful for Christmas card and tag backgrounds and each one will be different so I can feel that each recipient will be getting a unique card.

I had just as much fun creating my own Washi Tape with masking tape painted with Stone Fresco, stencils and stamping. Again Jo's snowflake was really useful and I used different colours of Archival ink to stamp some Lynne Perrella crowns and her 'Winter Wonderland' text. I didn't want to stop! Lin Brown's stencil with little circles looks so Christmasy when you use Snowflake Fresco. The idea for using this stencil on a Christmas make came from Lucy Edmondson at True Colours. But which stamp to use for my focal image on my Christmas ATC?

I recently invested in the beautiful Oxford Impressions Halloween plate 'Trick or Treat' because I had fallen for the two little pierrots! Now this couple look far more like characters from a long ago Christmas entertainment to me so I decided to use them for this ATC. They are stamped onto tissue and adhered to the card with Satin Glaze. I liked the idea of the background of Stone, Lake Wanaka, Antarctic and Snowflake Frescos not being lost behind the images so I did not paint them. I used white pen to highlight them and sprinkled their ruffs with Tim Holtz clear Distress Glitter. The taller little reveller has tiny blue and white glass beads on his costume and I punched a snowflake out of card spritzed with Vintage Photo and Frayed Burlap Distress Inks, decorated with Shabby Blue Frantage, White Pen and Pearlen Pen at the centre.
 Is this a couple of siblings all ready to head off for a Christmas party, or a pair of entertainers in a traditional panto? If they are 'Theatricals', they will be enchanting parents and children night after night in the plush red and gold interiors of crowded theatres . Enchanted by the fairy-tale before their eyes, the middle-class boys and girls in the audience will be unaware of the cold and shabby backstage world; the hard grind of being a child performer and the poor homes from which these 'magical' children came.   Now I have completed my first Christmas ATC, which I should like to link to the Artistic Stamper Christmas is Coming Challenge. I expect lots of you have already got well underway with card-making: I hope you have just as much fun as I've had creating your Christmas makes in the coming weeks!