Christmas Orna-Mini

Good morning fellow scrappers!  Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas & New Year.  I myself had a very relaxing one which is why I've been quiet in blogger land.  I took a few days off from work, I rested, read books, watched movies, spent quality time with my family & created at my leisure--now that's what I call a good vacation!

So before it gets even more later in the year, I'd like to share this Christmas project I made in December for Authentique.  For this project I combined products from both Authentique & Kiwi Lane Designs.

Kiwi Lane provided me with a sample of their 'Christmas Accessory' templates & with these templates I created this hybrid of a mini album & ornament.  Yes, I've made up my own word--an orna-mini!

This is because I couldn't decide in which direction to take this project--did I want a mini album?  Or did I want an ornament?  All I knew is that I only had one photo I wanted to use so it couldn't per say be a mini album but I also wanted more than one page to it which didn't really make it an ornament.  So I improvised & made my own little hybrid creation!  :-)

 There are a total of three ornaments within this project.  I have two small ones & one large one that I've used as my background.

In this photo you see a closeup of one of the small ornaments.  I've used a Kiwi template to trace & cut out this ornament from a piece of Clear Scraps acrylic.  I used the same template to cut out another ornament from one of the 'Joyous' papers & this I've adhered to the back of the acrylic.  Since this is acrylic--it's transparent--so the design of the paper shows through.

Next I took green & red alcohol inks & applied drops of the inks directly onto my acrylic (the bare side--not the side where the paper was adhered to).  Then to get all those splatter effects, I spritzed the drops of alcohol inks with a can of compressed air.  This always works like a charm for getting those streaky effects with alcohol inks.  You can find a tutorial for this technique here.

To finalize this ornament I applied clear dry adhesive along the border with a thin brush & applied a bit of Diamond Dust to the adhesive.

 All papers used are from Authentique's 'Joyous' collection.  I've used a bit of green Petaloo tinsel to highlight the border of my large background ornament.

 The two layers of this orna-mini are kept together with a 1" metal book ring.  I tied a bit of tulle & ribbon to the book ring to decorate it a bit more.  With my crop-a-dile I punched holes at the top of my ornaments & applied a white eyelet to it in order to run the 1" book ring through.

TIP: Ensure that whenever you use alcohol inks on acrylic that it's completely dry before you handle it.  As you can see in this photo you can see my big ol' thumb print in the upper corner of the ornament!  lol Got a bit too impatient which is silly since alcohol inks dry fairly fast on acrylic.  I guess those 30 seconds I had to wait were too long for me.  Tsk, tsk tsk...

The year was made with the use of a Dymo Label Maker. 

 Our family Christmas photo for 2013!  It was the best one out of many--it's the only one where Toby isn't sticking his tongue out.  lol  My pup is forever excited & is always panting.  My son is much more laid back & ended up 'posing' with his hand under his chin all on his own. 

The holly leaf was also made with the use of a Kiwi Lane template.  The edges were inked & dots of beige acrylic paint were applied.

Thanks for stopping by for a visit & I'm looking forward to what 2014 has in store!