Holiday Celebrations Week 2

Welcome back! For the November challenge, Holiday Celebrations, the Dreamweaver Dream Team will be showing ways to use Beacon Adhesives line of products in conjunction with Dreamweaver products to create party and packaging ideas, home decor, hostess gifts....

And since I had such fun playing with Rangers Distress Paints last week, I thought I'd continue playing with them and create another EASY and INEXPENSIVE project that could be given as a gift or used to decorate your own home for the holidays!

To begin, I started with 2" blank canvas that I picked up at my local craft store and dabbed them with Ranger Distress Paint in Chipped Sapphire and Brushed Pewter:

Then I misted them with water so that the paints mottled together:

Once the paint dried, I paste embossed a Snowflake stencil on each tile and sprinkled them with Ranger Distress Stickles Dry Rock Candy glitter. 

To put it all together I folded this May Arts Faux Burlap ribbon over a D-ring and glued it together with Beacon's Fabri-Tac. Then I secured each canvas on the ribbon also with the Fabri-Tac.

Here's a close-up of one of the tiles so you can see the great marbling effect of the paint on the canvas as well as the gorgeous shimmer of the Rock Candy glitter:

I haven't yet decided if this is going to be a hostess gift or get hung up in my house as part of the holiday decor. As some of you already know, I do a lot with snowflakes and snowmen in my holiday decorating so that I can keep them up well into February (or even March!). It helps fight the post-holiday blues and winter doldrums!

Hopefully this quick, easy and VERY INEXPENSIVE project will inspire you to create something to share in this month's Dreamweaver challenge. For all the details, check out the Dreamweaver blog.

AND for even  more inspiration, hop on over to the other Dream Teamers who are participating in today's hop, including our Guest Designer of the Month, Linda Neff!

Dream It Up! 

Linda Neff (GD)

Lea Kimmel 
Louise Healy  
Terrece Siddoway 
Wendy Jordan 
Pam Hornschu 
Cherylynn Moser

Holiday Celebrations with Distress Paint

Ready to be festively distressed once again? The Dream Team have been playing with Ranger's Distress Paints, and are ready to inspire you to be distressed as well...paint distressed that is!

Dreamweaver Stencils are the perfect choice to mix with all things festively distressed, as nothing shows off color and texture better than great designs. By following our hop and leaving love along the way, you have the opportunity to win a great prize package including five Ranger Distress Paints and five Dreamweaver Stencils! Here's the lineup for today, including our November Guest Designer:

Dream It Up!

Linda Neff (GD)

Cyndi Bundy

Lyn Bernatovich

Terrece Siddoway

Wendy Jordan

Heidi Erickson

Cherylynn Moser

Laura Drahozal

Louise Healy

Stacey Rumsby

Pam Hornschu

Lea Kimmel

This is also our first posting day featuring our new monthly challenge, "Holiday Celebrations", and for the entire month we will be demonstrating ways to use Beacon Adhesives' entire line of products with Dreamweaver to create special projects in home decor and gifts of love.

I had a lot of fun playing with the Distress Paints. They are a lot different than traditional acrylic craft paint because they are so much thinner. For me, that was both a good thing and a bad thing!

Since I am all about quick and easy, especially when it comes to the holidays and gift giving, I created two very easy and VERY inexpensive projects to share with you.

The first one was the most inexpensive. I started out with cheap ceramic tiles from the hardware store. I think they were like 16 cents each! My plan is to make a set of four of these and turn them into coasters tied with a ribbon.

Supplies Used: Dreamweaver LJ 849 Bare Trees Stencil
Ranger Distress Paint: Peeled Paint, Rusty Hinge, Barn Door and Black Soot
Beacon Fabri-Tac Adhesive

Instructions:

• Sand tile with 240 grit sandpaper and spray with acrylic primer. Let dry.
• Dab Distress Paint onto tile and mist with water to encourage blending/marbling. Heat set to dry.
• Align stencil over dry paint and using a stencil brush, rouge on black soot. Heat set to dry. (HINT: I first sprayed the back of the stencil  with stencil adhesive. This helped it to form a tight seal against the tile and prevented seepage.) 
• Spray deal glossy sealer.
• Glue felt to bottom with Fabri-Tac. (Hint: I first applied Dreamweaver Original Embossing Paste to back of tile to smooth out ridges so that the felt had a smooth, flat surface to adhere to.

What do you think? Kind of fun, kind of artsy..which is.not to be said for  project two!

For project two, I went clean, simple and very, very easy. This one cost a little more. I think $1.50!

Supplies used: Various Dreamweaver Snowflake stencils and Ranger Picket Fence Distress Paint

While perusing the craft store the other day I came across these beautiful blue chargers that were on sale for $1.50. I just couldn't resist buying them (and the black ones as well!). Now what to do with them? They were too pretty just to sit under another plate. And then the light bulb went off. Turn them into cookie platters for holiday gifts! And voila! this is the end result.

Very simple to so. Wash the charger first in warm soapy water and dry well. Then adhere stencils to the platters (again, I sprayed the stencils with spray stencil adhesive). Then using a rouging motion, I gently swirled on the Picket Fence paint. Once it was dry, I again applied a food safe sealer. 

Now won't those look pretty all covered in cookies! Hmmm, now if only I can find the time to bake the cookies!

I hope you've enjoyed these two little treats I've created for you. Hopefully they've inspired you to start working on your holiday and hostess gifts. I have more projects in the works that use Distress Paints and I will share those with you sometime next week!

Until then, finish hopping along this week's blog hop and remember to take some time TODAY to create. It's good for your soul!

A Quick and Frosty Gift

I have a couple of Christmas favorites. One of them is to make homemade, inexpensive gifts for neighbors and co-workers. And since time is always an issue, they have to be quite inexpensive.

Another favorite thing of mine is to bring the outdoors in for the holidays. I love the scent of pine, cedar....and the look and feel of snow.

So with that in mind, I thought I'd share you with a very quick, very inexpensive gift I made that I made for a neighbor.

The technique is identical to that done by both Lynell and Louise last week. When doing Christmas presents, I find it is easier to stick with the same stencil, just vary the vessel for variety. It makes clean up much simpler and hence saves me LOTS of time.

The cedar is leftover from a garland I made and the vase was on sale for $4! Considering I already had the stencil, the white paste and the glitter, this entire gift cost me less than $5! You can't beat that for inexpensive!

I know the holidays are a busy time but please take some time for yourself and wander over to the other Dream Team blogs for some more holiday inspiration. Hopefully you'll find a few minutes to participate in this months Frosty challenge because I've seen the new stencils and you definitely do not want to miss out on getting one for yourself!

Hugs to you all and hope your holiday season is bright and merry!