12 Days…day 2…FREE collage tutorial + Christmas eye candy

Ohhhh we are on day 2, and I'm feeling very festive! Are you? Are you wanting a pile of Gingerbread cookies to dive into?? okay, that just may be me…

So today, I want to introduce you to one of my projects I started this season (a couple of days ago!! LOL!!). This project is going to take a couple of days to post, so enjoy it while I string it out for you!! teeehee!!

While at Quilt Market, I attended this cool event called Sample Spree. During this event, you go into the ballroom at the George R Brown Convention Center, and you run around trying to buy "samples" that vendors are selling there!! You can get them all at a discount. I know I've shared here the fabrics and stuff I've gotten there, but I wanted to focus on this fun quilt! It is soooo whimsical and gorgeous! The fabric choices they put in with the kit are epic! 🙂

My first job was to cut the fabric as per the instructions!

The fun thing about this quilt is that the assembly goes from top to bottom. So the first row to put together is the holly vine.

Don'tcha just LOVE ricrak??? I do!!

Here's that first layer…

…to be continued…

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You probably know me by now! I have to have several (a million!) projects going at once!

Here's another one with a free collage tutorial included!!

a decorative Christmas Collage

using the FREE WORD ART from yesterday!! yipeee!!

SUPPLIES:

wooden mini tray

regular while acrylic paint

cream colored distress crackle paint (Ranger Ink)

linen

transparency

FREE WORD ART

inkjet printer

decoupage papers (preferably with Santa on there!)

buttons

lace

heart punch

scissors

coordinating scrap of fabric

quilt basting spray

glitter

adhesive (white glue, sticky red tape, and/or dimensional dots)

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First, using a photo manipulative software (I use PSCS3), take your word art and flip it horizontally, so it is backwards. Print it out on a transparency so the ink is wet on the back side of the transparency.

Using any type of rubbing object (nail file, bone folder), rub the ink onto the linen.

This is not going to be perfect…ie, you probably won't be able to read the words, except for the heart. This is for a background anyway…and it just looks darn cool!! 🙂

Print out the word art onto a sheet of cardstock paper and cut out the words you want to highlight.

Cut the linen to the desired background size and pull the threads on the edges off to have that frayed look! (LOVE!!!)

Paint your wooden tray. I used white acrylic paint first and then put large dollops of this crackle paint. I let it dry overnight to see the crackle texture come through…

(click on the pic to really see that very awesome cool texture!!!)

For the fabric heart, I used a paper punch and a piece of cardstock…

then I just cut around the heart on the fabric. Easy peasy…

If you have a Sizzix Big Shot or other fabric die cutting machine, there are heart dies out there. I like to use what I have…then it's FREE!! LOL!!

Now assemble your collage…play around with it…don't use adhesive yet…

It took me quite a number of tries to see how I liked it. This was my fave…

So I used white glue for everything but the words and buttons. For those, I used the dimensional dots. We'll see if they hold…LOL!! I have red sticky tape if they don't!! LOL!! (just being real here…adhesive is a debatable supply in the crafting world, for sure!!)

For the glitter, I grabbed my MUCH LOVED quilt basting spray and doused the collage just a little bit! I was impressed with the sticky-ness of the glitter on that spray!!

You could use any spray adhesive you have!

and here is what it looks like after the glitter…

I scraped the glitter off of Santa's face and the little girlie and a little bit of the fabric heart. It's pretty big glitter, so I didn't want to cover up the main points of the collage! LOL!!

and here is the collage completely finished…