TCR #87 Together At Last and TCR #87 New Home card

So it's finally here, the month of December. With each year, time seems to go into warp 6 and Christmas knocks on the door almost before the replicator has finished making cards, buying gifts and the zillion other things that are on my to-do-list.

I love Christmas and save some extra vacation days only to be able to slot in a day off from work here and there up to Christmas. My friend Barbro says I have to be the only person on earth who writes Christmas letters with a fountain pen and still sends paper Christmas cards rather than electronic ones. Well, that may be so, but doing these things give me the genuine fuzzy and warm Christmas feel in my heart and I can only hope that some of the love sent is felt by the recipients.

Having said that, today is the the first in a line of December Christmas palettes over at TCR. It's a sunny and happy palette of the colours Candlelight, Blue Ribbons, Linen White and Silver Bells. Such wonderful names *sigh* and such gorgeous colours *even more sigh*. Absolutely fabulous work by Lydell putting together this, thank you so very much!

I am such an infinitely slow scrapper, but my page really scrapped itself even though it took a few days before everything had dried. I absolutely adore the colours! This LO is also the second heaviest page that I have ever created, the heaviest is the TCR #82 Christmas Wallhanger.

The title of my LO is "Together At Last". The photo is of my MIL and FIL on their wedding day in 1960. Some of you might recall that they had to wait for 5 years before they could afford to get married. It certainly was a day of great joy when they were finally together as husband and wife. My DH was born less than a year later.

All papers are from the BoBunny Welcome Home collection.



I handstitched in cream on the die cut shaped stripey layer. On the backing paper I used 2 threads each of cream and blue, gives the stitching almost the same effect as bakers twine but so much easier to stitch with. I'll come back to those frosty leaves under the brown Prima jewel swirl a bit later in my post.



I learned how to make the gingham ribbon flower in a tut by the beautiful sweet and awesomely talented queen of shabby chic, Ivana Camdzic.

That gorgeous white button is handmade by Ivana and made on order. She hasn't got an Etsy shop yet but she has told me that if you send her en email, she will send you a convo and pics of the buttons that can be ordered.

Check out Ivana's blog, you'll come to shabby heaven:      Paper Girl Crafts

Here's her email address:                                                  ivc689@mail.usask.ca               

Not only that, she is also featured GD for December over at UOAS!




Chunky layers, lace and lots of Prima.



A close up of the happy couple.



Do you see that yummie pearl pin nesting on the frosty leaves? It's a Majesty jewel pin from another totally fabulous online store, Meg's Garden in Australia. Click  HERE    for some fantastic browsing!

Meg is the most sweetest and loveliest lady ever, her service is super quick and smooth. I am sure you recognize a couple of talented ladies that are on her DT - Gayle Price and Adriana Bolzon. You can see their gorgeous work if you have a browse of Meg's Garden blog  HERE




So back to the frosty velvet leaves which I bought at Meg's Garden. When I bought them they were pale green. I started by taking a generous dollop of white Gesso on my fingers and simply rubbed it into the leaves. Then I repeated the process with my beloved Snow Paint. Before these two coats had dried, I dunked the leaves into glitter and Flower Soft in Polar White. When that had dried, I generously dabbed Stickles in Crystal on them and then sprinkled some more glitter on them.



The DA baroque chippie frame is more or less covered in the flower bonanza, IRL you can see more of it between the blooms. I wanted this flourish at the top to show however. The raw chippie looks like THIS
before it has been worked on.

I covered it several times in DH dabber Snow Cap, but instead of dabbing on the colour I used a brush and really slabbed it on. Then I covered it in TH crackle paint in Picket Fence. When that had dried I used oodles of Stickles Crystal on it. You should see it in candle light IRL - AHHH! that's glitter and shine for you!



Chunky, chunky! I have layered two different chippies from the BB Welcome Home collection on top of a TH ornament plate and then a resin frame. Blue jewels for some bling. Down in the left bottom corner you can also see a key from the BB Welcome Home collection, a cut-off snippet from a Prima Jewel branch, and a cut-off piece from a chandelier vine. The chandelier vine can be found in several places between the flowers.



Bling bling!

While I had the left overs from making my page still on my desk, I made a card for my friend L in the UK. She has just moved into her new home and has told me she's had her kitchen entirely fitted with units from the Swedish mecca of IKEA. Yup, there's one in Manchester too.

This really is a long post, so an extra big thank you to those of you who have actually made it to the end!

Wishing all of you beautiful kind people a truly wonderful weekend! I have a few Christmas gifts to buy, others to wrap in and some more cards to create. Looks like another super busy weekend but ho ho ho - that's how it should be in December!

Mr Chakotay - take her into warp 6! ;)))

xoxoxo Eila