CVC Workshop Winter Wonderland Project

 

Some photos from my Winter Wonderland workshop at Country View Crafts - 30th November 2024

My 2024 Christmas workshop project for Country View Crafts - I so love making 3D boards and they are very popular. I used lots of Tim Holtz products and loved adding the ledge and blocks to help create this wintry landscape. The natural elements helped add a wonderful cold, icy, wintry feel.

1.    Paint all the small wooden pieces with 1 coat of white gesso – dry. Repeat with a coat of white acrylic paint – include the base of the silver trees. Sand the edges of the cubes and blend the exposed edges with a dark brown DI to give a shabby effect. Repeat the effect randomly on the corners and odd parts of the ledge and frame.

2. Paint the large board with a coat of gesso to seal it and dry. (no paint)

Take speckles or snowy effect stencil and texture paste (I used distress texture paste matte) add very sparingly mostly round the edges of the top 2/3 of the board and dry.

Take tumbled glass and broken china Dis and speckled egg and iced spruce DO. (or any sky blue colours). Create puddles and dabble them over, spritz, drip and dry. Take white acrylic paint and lightly brayer over the top, the white will hit the top of some of the snow droplets but also create lighter areas on the board that you can rub in with your finger to create cloud effects. Dry.  If you want to add more of the blues, repeat puddles and daub with a brush, the texture paste soaks up some of the blue watery ink and also the inks lay and puddle between the snow droplets. When it’s dry scrape the texture paste through the speckles/snow stencil to add more white snowy texture through it. Again, dry it. KEEP BOTTOM THIRD OF THE BOARD CLEAN.

Moving to the bottom third of the board use the tumbled glass DI and Iced Spruce DO to make puddles of colour. With a paint brush daub a light layer over the board and add a little silver paint into it, let it all move around a lot in your hand and dry it. Splatter with water and watch some rings appear. Dry and take iced spruce distress ink and a chosen small chosen stencil (I used the mini version of Festive THS029) to create background for the seed heads.

Glue the ledge on at this point. The top of the ledge is 22 cms from the top f the board. Put to one side to dry.

 

3 Take the four, silver, die-cut trees, glue shapes back-to-back, offset slightly, and don’t worry if some of the white shows through, it actually looks like snow. Glue a gold star to the top of each one.

Take the gold sparkly row of fir trees, Cut the sides to fit the wooden panel and use a palette knife to add a small amount of snowtex to both the gold and silver trees using a palette knife. Put aside to dry.

 

4 Take the white card panel. Blend silver paint through a star stencil and dry it. Blend tumbled glass (light blue) DI over the surface. Sparingly rub some micro glaze randomly over the surface and gently buff off excess. Blend broken china (mid blue) over the surface. Splatter water droplets on, leave for about 30 seconds and the blot off with a paper towel and dry. You have created a mottled sky with snow falling in the background. Sand the edges and then blend a dark blue and then a dark brown distress ink round. Splatter it, the main board, the panel and the row of fir trees with some white paint. Dry the card panel, then adhere this to the wooden panel to create a frame. Paint glue round three sides of the frame (not the bottom one) and sprinkle rock candy glitter over it. Put aside to dry.

 

5 Take the round circle, lightly blend antique linen over the surface. Spritz with water, blot & dry. Spritz, blot & dry a second time. Place the moon mask over the top & blend antique linen distress oxide through it to create the texture of the moon. Dry it. Use a very fine paint brush to add glue over the oxide and dip into rock candy glitter.

 

6 Take the ribbon spritz it with water. Make a little puddle of tumbled glass, dip and dry. Repeat with a watery puddle of salty ocean. Make it into a bow.

 

7. Make up the double snowflake. Use small amounts of brown and white paints to colour the deer.

Now all pieces are prepped it’s time to assemble the project. Start by adding the star background frame on the ledge and adhere the two blocks either side of it. Glue on the silver icicles strip, the moon, gold stars, silver snowflakes. Adhere the white dried flowers and bundle of sticks on the blocks. Use a glue gun to add the seed head spray, bow and bells. Glue on the silver trees then use snow-tex on the ledge and adhere the decorative pieces – I always add glue to the areas that are going to sit in the ‘snow’. Add the Winter Wonderland title. Lay this flat in a box to carry it home.