Christmas Assemblage

I am amazed that I caught the holiday crafty bug as early as I did this year.  I think designing for Alpha Stamps really helped that along, since we have to get all the delicious eye candy ready for the crafty community.  Anyway, today I am going to show off (gasp) a holiday piece I made to show off all kinds of new Christmas charms that Leslie got in the shop.

I started with one of Tim Holtz's configuration boxes.  I really love these things!  You can change up the pattern of the box to suit your needs.  I chose to leave out a bunch of the smaller compartments to create a spot for a larger scene up top.  This gave me the perfect spot to showcase my Dresden Santa, deer, Santa sack and one of the new woodland trees.  These are really cool as they come white and you can color them however you want too.

I had an idea straight away to make some sort of Santa sack and have the charms spilling out.  Now I am not much of a "fabric-ey" person, but a crafty pal coached me.  Thanks Brittney!  I simply took a bit of her scrap fabric and stuffed it with some of that white fluffy stuff and tied it up.  I then manipulated it to get it to lean in a way that worked for me and got to gluing.  

Now my wise pal Brittney advised me that this may happen, but my sloppy crafting ways made this inevitable...lots of glue showed up on the fabric.  I simply covered up my mess with little bits of vintage mica snow. This subsequently added a bit of shimmer and a lot of texture, which I love.  

Here is a close up of the bottom compartments.  I am always on the search for tiny things.  The drum was found on a Christmas pick at a big box craft store.  The deer focal was scored in a giveaway I won last year.  I am happy to have found a great spot to show him off.  

Here is a shot so you can see how the outside of the box looks.  I covered it in paper from Tim Holtz that was colored with red stain.  I also used some really cute decorative tape to edge out the box.  To add more distress and depth copper guilders paste was buffed all over the piece.

I hope you all are embracing the upcoming holidays in your crafty world as well!

Cheers, 

Rhea