aqua snowflake

The Craft Barn is not hosting 1 but 2 challenges this year, the first one that started past Sunday is a monthly calendar challenge.

Each month we will receive 2 words:  a color and an object which we need to incorporate in that month’s page.

More info can be found here.

Step 1was to determine the size. I didn’t have to think too hard on that, because I enjoyed working on the 21 x 21 cm size last year during the Q&L challenge I choose that size.

I will be making a hanging wall calendar, with on the one page the art and on the other the calendar, that way I can re-use the calendar each year, either by rebinding or by gluing over the previous one.

I am also planning to use the artwork to  make a digital calendar for 2016, so I am already set for my gifts next year J

For the calendar part I found this neat printable over on www.botanicalpaperworks.com

I haven't made the whole structure yet, need to run out to get some more black paper.Here is what the first page looks like

On to the actual crafting now.

This month the color is aqua and snowflakes need to be somewhere on the page.

I started with a layer of gesso, followed by some aqua colored inktense pencils. I know this technique where you spray some Dylusions spray inks and  remove a pattern through a stencil with a babywipe and wanted to see if this also works with Inktense pencils, and it does! To add some more depth I added some blue DI through the same snowflake stencil and embossed different snowflakes with clear/ white and holographic embossing powder.

And then I constructed this cute snowman out of these parts

The shape was cut out of a cereal box and got a layer of texture paste.

The hat is stamped and so are the birdhouses. The birds are die-cut out of textbook and colored using inktense (what else)

The arms are made out of some copper wire and then all assembled and glued to the page.

It just needed a fitting quote and found just the perfect one: A Snowflake is winter’s butterfly.

A bit of DI around the edges and finished.

Don’t you feel the cold just by looking at it? I do.