Holiday Blog hop

Hello friends!  Today I am delighted to share that Want 2 Scrap and Passionately Artistic blog have joined forces for a happy festival of great holiday projects! 

Want2Scrap Scrapbook Manufacturer is proudly sponsoring the Passionately Artistic blog hop! We have joined forces to bring you an amazing hop filled with creative goodness to inspire you for 12 full days!!! We are so excited to bring you such wonderful inspiration leading you into the holiday season.  To start from the beginning of the hop, please visit the Passionately Artistic blog for all the details . . . . otherwise you have come to the next stop in the 12 days of Christmas hop.

Be sure and check out the Want 2 Scrap blog link above to see all of the hop details...I hear prizes will be awarded to lucky commentors so you want to fire up those commenting fingers and make sure to stop at all the hop blogs.

Speaking of prizes, I personally will be giving away some Want 2 Scrap goodies plus some gorgeous vintage lace here on my blog-o to my sweet commentors on this post!  (You don't have to follow my blog but I won't stop ya! ;) )

OK, ready to hop?  All of the designers were asked to share a family tradition and a project and I am happy to share my photo ornament tradition.  Each year since having children 9 years ago, I have made some sort of photo ornament for our tree and for close family members.  This is the most fun collection to pull out year after year for our tree!

This year I was inspired to make a canvas photo frame/curio after taking a class with the talented Mr. Tim Holtz.  This uses a small ATC size artist canvas which I was able to find locally at Beverly's crafts.


I wanted to go with a wintery angel (see the tinsel halos on the girls?) theme this year.  I kept the colors limited to white, silver and blue.  I used tinsel and braid trim, Martha Stewert clear micro glitter, seam binding, silver jewelry makers thread, tiny eye screws and BLING from Want 2 Scrap to make my ornament.  Well what to my wondering eyes do appear?  No, not 8 tiny reindeer, but the lack of blue bling in my Want 2 Scrap box!  Ack!  Brilliant planning huh? But, BUT, I do always make sure I have plenty of clear bling that I can custom color on hand.  Enter clear bling and a sharpie marker to complete my ornament!  Simple!

I hope you have fun hopping around today on the blog hop.  I sure do appreciate you stopping by my blog.  If you'd like to see the steps I used to cover my canvas frame and photo tutorial follows...

The canvas curio/frame tutorial
The first step illuminated by the brilliant Tim Holtz was to FLIP your canvas over!  Ah hah!  What a moment!  I chose to give the inside edge of my frame a quick coat of white acrylic paint.  You can work quick here since any messy painting will be covered later.

You know me and my love affair with vintage sheet music these days ;)  I had a sheet waiting for the frame.  I applied a generous but even coat of mod podge to the top of the frame edge with a paint brush.

Then turn it face down onto a section of the music paper.
After it was dry enough to not slip around on the paper, I applied Tim's tissue tape to the edge of the mini canvas.  Tim whispered a little info at the class I recently attended....he said this holiday version of the tape is considered "one and done" meaning once the stock is out this year, this tape is GONE *gasp*...so of course I had to get and use some!

Tissue tape has a light tack to it so you may want to put mod podge under the tissue tape as well.  Especially when you want to fold over the excess tightly.  Once your tissue tape is tightly adhered, trim a piece of music paper to cover the back...and then, you got it, more mod podge!

Time to trim the window out of the canvas back errr I mean "front" ;)

 I ran my finger along the edge to define where I should cut.  I performed the trim step while the mod podge was still slightly wet so any ragged edge cuts could be smoothed in right away.  If you need to trim later when the glue is dry, just add a little more mod podge and smooth away any raggedies (yes, "raggedies" is a technical term LOL)

We did it!  Yes!  I canvas back turned curio/picture frame!  The embellishing is left up to all of your capable hands now!  Here's a little piece of my original Tim project that inspired me to use this technique for my annual photo ornament this year...

uh huh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about!  Props to Tim and his team for MAKING the bingo piece for everyone in the class (something about the magic of the Ranger Melting Pot!) and finding real vintage lightbulbs and micah snow! 

OK artistic hoppers, go make something and share it with the world :)...happy holidays to you all!