The First Noel... **Plus The Winner!**

...I don't know about you but that festive feeling is creeping up on me early this year!  I mean, I am not at the point of contemplating Christmas cardmaking just yet... oh no, I usually leave that to the second weekend in December when I get all of a panic and go out and buy them (shock horror!)   However, since I bought the gorgeous Christmas Post papers by Craftwork Cards, I have been feeling ever so slightly Christmassy.  The other night I had cleared up the Room of Stash, done all my DT commitments, answered all my emails, done all my up-coming class projects... so that meant... I had some PLAYTIME!!! Yeeehawwww... I loves it when I get some proper guilt free crafting time and I made the most of it... making this piece for starters:

Using the gorgeous papers... and the offcuts that I always save, I popped them onto a 5" x 7" canvas, paper block stylee.  These papers really are lushness themselves and even the smidgiest of smidgy pieces is perfect to use!  Once the blocking was done, I used watered down Mushroom paint to blend all the papers together and give them a shabby look... and once this was dried I slapped a generous layer of Glue & Seal on to ...erm... seal (!) the papers, this not only means that they won't be affected by any water/humidity, it also means that if you make a boo-boo, you can just wipe it off!

I used my Stabilo All pencil to add some shading to the paper layers and then set about getting covered in glitter!  I know!  Me! Glitter!  I blame that Tim bloke you know... I used to eschew all things glittery and turn my nose up at anything remotely sparkley.  Not any more... Oh ho!  The new Distress Glitters are LUSH! GORGEOUS! LUSH! GORGEOUS! Mmm, you get the message I reckon!  Anyways, I cut out the Noel from Grungeboard and slapped Glue & Seal on it and then popped Tarnished Brass Glitter over the top and allowed it to dry.  I then grunged it up a bit with some black paint...well, it has to be a bit grungey ;O))  I then cut out the Tattered Poinsettia using more of the Christmas Post papers and added Holly Branch leaves and branch using Distress Core-Dinations.  The flower was coloured with Fired Brick DI and the leaves with Forest Moss DI.  A few golden pearls and a snowflake finished off the canvas... and there you have it... all things festive!

Anyways, I guess that I should get around to telling you who the winner of yesterday's Bezel giveaway is... so, I had 81 comments left, thank you all!  I fed this into Random.org and he popped up with the number 26 as the winner, this tallies with the comment left by Patricia Youdell   Congrats to Patricia , please email me your address and I will pop your prize into the post.

That's all for today... as ever, thank you for looking... I hope you have a fabby day!  TTFN

Hels x