Christmas in July

Christmas in July – time to start working on your projects for the holidays.  This is the challenge at Mixed MediaMojo.  The extra twist is to use a Santa on your project. 

 I started with a canvas board.  It measures  6 x 8.  I covered the board with part of a carry out bag from Panera.  I love this muted pattern on the kraft.  It was adhered to the board with gel medium.  After it had dried, I put a layer of clear gesso on the paper.  I did not want to lose the background color but wanted some bite for the layers to be added.

The Santa for this piece is chipboard from My Mind’s Eye from 2013.  He is super cute but needed to be more vintage looking.  I took  distress ink and rubbed it across the Santa to give it a more vintage, mellowed look.  Well I didn’t quite like that so I started adding in some color on the jacket trim, the gift bag, belt and gloves. 

The clear gesso covered all the muted pattern on the kraft paper so I decided to just start adding some paint.  I put on blue distress paint.  I then used crackle paste through a stencil.  After it was dry I rubbed green, brown and red distress paint on it.  Now the fun with begin - Adding all the layers of stuff. 

I adhered the chipboard with gel medium.  I also used gel medium on the baubles.  The canvas seemed a little naked in the corners so I found this green trim and added it to two corners.  The edge of the canvas has a copper metallic paint along the edges.

So on those hot summer days, get out some of your Christmas stuff and start creating beautiful projects.