Christmas in July ... TSP week 11

There was a Christmas in July challenge on The Sailing Pineapple Blog, so I made another page for my positive affirmation / sayings book : Wish Everyday was Christmas.

To make the background : I adhered triangular pattered paper, intended to simulate Christmas trees. Then I colored extra thick gel medium with red acrylic paint and painted it onto the background in swirly patterns with a hard bristle brush. When it was dry I doodled the circles and ornament shapes. Adding some white gel pen for highlights and a few glimmer brads. I stamped messy white snowflakes in the background too - used my Dylusions stamping pad for the first time for this - I sprayed the white into the empty stamp pad. Saw Dyan Reaveley do that. It worked out well, gives a scattered look, but the background is very textured with ridges from the gel medium. I edged the whole thing in a red artist big brush pen, smudging with my fingers.

For the main image : In 'word' I made the cat the desired size and printed him onto pale grey card stock*. I colored him with my copics markers, a lighter and darker green. Then I took my blending tool and some alcohol ink blending solution and just pounced lightly over the top of the cat. It gives a really cool mottled look.






The cat was fussy cut, a Christmas hat was made from tissue paper and a bell added to his tail. He was popped up with dimensional tape. Doesn't he look funky in his shade of green :)


For the wording I used a combination of Tim's words from a word stack, my own handwriting and a sticker ....

I had an awesome time creating and having fun with this project, in the heat we are having here, thinking about the coolness and festivities of Christmas .... lol.

I hope you like it and got inspired - enough to leave a comment ? LOL

*My new favourite paper/card to print digital images onto is pale colored card stock, there are a couple of reasons for this. I have an inkjet printer and often if I print onto white, smooth cardstock the image will easily smudge or react with whatever product I use over it, to color it etc. Many colored card stocks are more absorbent, meaning there is no need to seal the image and it dries much faster. Secondly, colored card stock is often thicker than white, so when I pop up my image it is stronger and remains flat. A good comparison here is Stampin' Up! whisper white compared to a pale subtles color. It has taken me some time to move away from using the traditional white as the stamping base, but I am going to color the image with a variety of mediums anyway, so really it doesn't matter what color I start with :)