Christmas Cobweb

Hello again, my Crafty Cronies. I'm back with a little something for you. Yesterday I was rummaging through our boxes of Christmas knick-knacks looking for inspiration and found a project that I started last year but never finished. There's a story behind this incomplete enterprise and it goes something like this:

Last year we visited the Dresden Christmas Market in Germany. It was breathtaking - a treasure trove of traditional hand-made gifts, ornaments, trinkets and such. Simply bursting with old-world romantic charm. The Dresden Christmas Market is said to be the oldest in Germany, dating back to the early 1400s. It was in Dresden that I saw and fell in love with the most exquisite ornament. A delicate, sparklydoodad with the teeniest little silver bells, crystals, tulle, lace...it was perfect and I had to have it. That was until I asked the price ... €45! What?! For some paper, ink and glittery stuff?! I can do it for next to nothing, I thought. So I wished the stall-keeper a very merry Christmas and walked away. And then, from a safe distance, I took pictures of my heart's desire between random Teutonic shoppers.

Back home I tried to make sense of my blurry night shots and attempted to reproduce the ornament with some purple CS and scrap patterned papers. Why purple? Last year, after too much mulled wine I decided that a King's tree should be dressed in purple. This year, I'm staying away from mulled wine.

Back to my ornament: I played around with my dies and stamps to find out what worked best. It was fiddly and oh-so-time-consuming but I was determined to have my trinket. When I was about 80% done, with child-like glee, I showed my husband my labour of love and he had this to say: "Wow! You've made a beautiful cobweb for Christmas, darling!"

There you have it! My beloved living up to his nickname of Conan the Barbarian, yet again. He makes no excuses for calling a spade a spade, and does so without fear or favour. Anyway, I was crushed and silently swept my cobweb into a box, where it remained until last night. I'm putting it out now because I saw a similar ornament on the front cover of the Stampin' Up! Holiday Mini Catalogue and on the uber-talented Becca Feeken's blog Amazing Paper Grace. It didn't look half bad. Cobwebs are back in fashion! And is it a coincidence that CR8FN #60 is featuring my original colour choice? Time to shake off the cobwebs and bring my finished project to light. Here it is:

      

I'm attempting a 5-point snowflake / star / spaceship, and so I stamped and cut out 20 ornaments on purple CS.  I cannot for the life of me remember what ink I used last year but last night some blue Memento ink seemed the closest match.

The paper ruffle centre is made with scrap Stampin' Up! dsp in green - can't remember what it's called, retired now for sure.  In the original version I used loops of silver cord beneath the paper ruffle. I yanked that off and added green twine. To seal the ruffle, I glue-dotted a blue button and popped a crystal flower in the middle.

I had to touch up the shine by slapping on some more Crystal Stickles and replaced a couple of missing green bling.  In between the ornaments I stuffed down some sheer white ribbon loops. You could make smaller baubles and fill the space between the larger baubles for a fatter fuller ornament. But I wanted to keep mine fairly wispy to the light shine through. 

Did not fiddle with the behind. Keeping it simple, y'all! I punched a hole in the ornament and strung some sheer blue ribbon through. There's plenty of opportunity to go crazy with Christmassy embellishments on the back, a sentiment, image, perhaps. 

Dies

Spellbinders 2010 Heirloom Ornaments S4-283

Spellbinders Standard Circles SM S4-116

Ink

Memento Danube Blue

Stamps

WMS Seasons of Love

WMS Vintage Ornaments

This is probably the most time consuming project - 9 months from start to finish! But I'm glad it's finally out there. What's nice about this is you can dress it up or down as you wish. Mine is fairly simple but you get the picture. And why not make Halloween, Thanksgiving or even Valentine themed hangy-thingy. And by using just patterned paper for the pieces you can cut out most of the work - mainly stamping and die-cutting.... it takes forever!

With almost a year in the making I simply must take this piece to Christmas Stampin' All Year Long #23. And as always, I'll be sharing my stuff with the folks at MIM#102.

Thanks for dropping by and listening to me drone on endlessly about cobwebs and barbarians! Have a wonderful weekend and I'l see you bright eyed and bushy tailed on Monday!

Beijinhos.


Blogged to:
Espresso Frappuccino and

Mood music by a much loved old 
CD from 1996