Victorian Christmas

I thrilled to be asked to do a blog post by Glenda, as I have always loved her stamps since discovering them on C&C many years ago, back in the days when they only came on wooden blocks.

When I received my stamps to play with – Santa Baby and Holly Bells – the one image I really couldn’t see how to use was the mantelpiece – to me, it was unfinished, I wanted the rest of the fireplace! Funnily enough, it is the one I have used the most..............

My moment of inspiration came when I was using a friend’s holly wreath stencil at a craft afternoon and suddenly thought that the mantelpiece stamp would fit in the centre. I quickly stencilled it in vintage photo onto some spare card and took it home to play.

To me, this was a very Victorian image, which was why everything is vintage photo, although they are not really Christmassy colours.
 I stamped the image in the centre, coloured it by dragging the colour out with a waterbrush. I sponged scattered straw very lightly round the image, then vintage photo working from the edges in towards the holly, finally adding a touch of black soot in the corners.

Matted onto dull gold and dark brown before adding to a white 7x7 card base.

One thing I love about CB stamps is how well they work together, (and indeed with other makes of stamps ) and for the second card I dug out an old EI stamp to use as a foreground image – this time I wanted lighter silvery tones, still not very traditional Christmas though, and still very Victorian.

I stamped the image with smoky grey versafine, coloured it with watercolour pencils and sponged weathered wood round the edges, It was matted onto dark and light pearlescent silver card, then onto a 6x6 card blank dusted with weathered wood again. The maid was stamped with smoky grey and cut out, mounted onto foam pads slightly overlapping the layers.

The final effort got a bit brighter in colour.

I stamped a tree image from one of the old Christmas sets sideways to make the branches of a Christmas tree down the left side of a 13cm square of white card, using iced spruce ink. I roughly

cut a mask for the tree branches and stamped the mantelpiece behind the branches using a brown ink pad. I coloured the image with marker pens, then sponged old paper ink round it.
Apologies for the squiffy photo, I did it in a hurry as my scanner didn't like having the screen cleaned and decided to add interesting splodges everywhere............

I am playing very happily with the other stamps, so watch this space!