“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” ESV Bible 2 Cor. 9:7-8
The holiday season is upon us. Thanksgiving is next week. Sadly, with the Corona Covid 19 virus many of us will not be gathering. I’ve been thinking what I can do to salvage Christmas. There will still be gift giving and I’m contemplating a camping trip with my children and grandkids where we can open gifts and celebrate. In the meantime, I’ve been making some beaded jewelry for my daughter, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters.
I’m continuing to make some gift tags, which I will give out as stocking stuffers. Here are two that I finished this week.
Because of the design these gift tags had different dimensions than the others I posted last week. The Manger Scene is 2-1/8″ x 2-3/4″ and the Christmas Gathering tag is 2-1/8″ x 4-1/8″. The others were 2″ x 2-3/4″. I used a free coloring book page I found on the internet for my layout of the manger scene which I reduced and using a light table traced on cardstock. The sheep on the right was added (not part of the original design. I used colored pencil (Prismacolor, The Fine Touch) to color in the figures of Joseph, Mary, Jesus and the sheep. I used Dick Blick art markers for the sky (periwinkle), the manger and hay (caramel). I used gold ink for the stars and Ranger “Star Dust” stickles glitter glue in the sky. The border is black ink from a fine point brush pen.
I got the idea for the Christmas Gathering from an old card I had in my stash. Except for the beaver character, I substituted different animal characters for my design. I found photographs of the fox, turtle, pica, meerkat, and bluejays on the internet and sketched them on a piece of paper in the positions used in the final design. Then, I used my scanner to reduce the size and printed out a copy on cardstock. Finally, I colored in the animals with color pencil. Again, I used Prismacolor™, and The Fine Touch™ pencils. The colored original was scanned and reduced again and moved into Adobe Lightroom where I cleaned up some pencil marks and printed several copies onto a page of cardstock. These I added the snow and shadows with light blue pencil and added the title in speedball acrylic ink. To add sparkle to the snow and Christmas tree lights, I again used Ranger™ “Star Dust” stickles glitter glue.
I haven’t decided what my next project will be. I may design a couple greeting cards for Christmas and New Years. Perhaps, I will try more embossing techniques. It should be easier on a larger format. I need to get back to making my memory books. I have three more to do. I am excited that in January, I signed up for “Wanderlust” a series 52 of art classes. I hope to share my project results on this blog and on my FB page named after my blog.
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