If you're not shopping for Halloween costumes, then you're either starting on your Christmas card making or buying presents.  The Holiday Season is officially upon us crafters anyway.  So let me inspire you with this new Christmas line from KaiserCraft.  Yes indeed, it's the very company that makes all the wonderful wooden MDF projects you love so much.  As soon as I saw this in the Sneak Peeks from CHA, I was hoping and hoping that this would make it into the Shoppe.  My delight was complete when I saw the Deluxe Kit that Tammy put together with this beautiful Vintage paper line. 

Here is a layout of my two "dress up" Queens.  This day, they were Santa's Helpers of course.  We did this photo shoot during the great blizzard of 2010 trying to shoo away the cabin fever.  It's a bit hard letting your 3 1/2 foot children play in 5 feet of snow!

My first step, since I wanted to pick up the red of the dress in the photograph was to cut the tan background off the sheet with the scrolling die cut.  I cut around the edges and used a dark red background to replace the old one.  The edges of the red cardstock are inked with the Mudslide Colorbok pad included in the kit.

TIP: Since the Colorbok pad is ink instead of Chalk ink, you can dab a makeup sponge onto the ink pad and use the sponge to ink your edges for more of a brushed and softer look.  Using the ink pad directly on the edges of your paper can give harsh, dark lines that do not give an aged look to your project.

Next, I created a Christmas tree of sorts by cutting out wavy triangles out of the green damask paper and distressing the edges with the Mudslide ink using the tip above.  I wanted the scrolling die cut to work as a frame, so I used my Swivel Exacto knife to cut out an edge on the inner part of the die cut...this is known as fussy cutting.  I set my Christmas tree inside the cut and removed any green edges sticking out the other side.




The mat for the bigger photo was created using the Martha Stewart Deco Fan around the page punches.  I only did two sides since I was tucking the photo behind the tree and another cut edge of the die cut at the bottom.  The snowflakes are made with the St Nick/Newspaper sheet and Joys of the Season Cricut cartridge. 

To give the snowflakes a more vintage and finished look, I inked the edges with the Mudslide ink.   I used both sides of the St Nick paper to create the snowflakes.  The fatter ones above were made with the Newsprint side and the skinnier ones were made with the St Nick side. I used Mudslide over the skinny snowflakes to darken them up a bit to contrast with the fatter snowflakes and yet still keep the design visible underneath.  My next step for all the snowflakes was to coat them with Rock Candy Crackle Paint.  While the paint was still wet, I grabbed some translucent sparkly embossing powder between my thumb and index finger, and gently rubbed my fingers together over the snowflakes as it lightly dusted them with the powder.  Using your fingers to rub the powder over top of your snowflakes will keep it light and even.  I used my heat gun lightly over the snowflakes to just melt the embossing powder so it wouldn't leave a milky sheen on the snowflakes and Crackle Paint, then I let the rest air dry to create the crackling effect.





So, now go panic...because you only have 95 days until Christmas.  Hah!!  Happy Scrapping!