A Couple Christmas Ornaments to Close Out The Year

Well, it's here, the last day of 2014. As you look back, how was your year? As I look back I feel peaceful, so I guess all in all ours was good - I certainly don't have that "Thank God that year's behind us!" feeling I've had a couple of other years (2009 being one of the worst offenders). 2015 is so far shaping up to be an exciting year, with a big extended family trip to Greece in the works, so I'm also looking forward with a happy heart.

December 31st marks my last official day on the Blue Fern Studios Design Team, and my last day with Flying Unicorn was December 15th, and I haven't pursued any design teams for 2015 (yet?!?), so I'm feeling a little adrift right now, though having the opportunity to recharge my scrappy batteries over the past month has been refreshing. I'm incredibly thankful for my time on both of these wonderful teams, and look forward to watching each company continue to grow.

Today I'm sharing my last couple of Christmas projects, some wooden Christmas ornaments by Julie Nutting for Prima (available in the Flying Unicorn Store in case you want to stock up for next year now). I mounted each of the ornaments with repositionable adhesive Glue Dots on gift tags, so they can be removed and hung on the tree.

The first ornament, Santa's Helper, was coloured with Copic Sketch markers, with details added with a black journalling pen and white Stamper's Big Brush Pen. The background of the tag is Cigar Box Secrets from Prima, which surprisingly was my go-to Christmas line this year, even though they aren't Christmas papers.

I was surprised by how well alcohol markers worked on this wood surface - because it is a manufactured wood the grain goes in every direction as you can see in the photo below, so the colour does not get wicked into other areas of the design.

The second ornament is Starr. For this ornament I played around with different media - Prima Crackle Paste for the star, embossing powder for the jacket and holly, puff paint for the collar and headband, Prima Chalk Edgers for the skin, Liquid Pearls for the buttons, metallic Distress Paint overlaid by crackle medium and white acrylic paint for the wings, with an Aquarellable pencil for the details.

As you can see, the different media add a lot more dimension to this tag.

My last ornament is another Starr, this one done more simply. I used Krylon Gold leafing pen for the star, with a black Copic maker on the interior to add contrast. She was coloured with Copics and a journaling pen, and her wings were done simply with white paint outlined with an Aquarellable pencil in black.

Thank you so much for stopping in today. My best wishes for a healthy, happy, productive 2015 to you and yours!