Winter Wonderland Elf 🧝🏻

Hello! Hope your holiday must-dos are winding down and the get-to-dos are a-plenty! ☺️ I’m sharing this festive, super-layered make with a cute elf and LIGHTS 💡💡 so glad I finally tried these! This project was a labor of love but so fun and the background turned out fab, got my gradient fix for a bit 🤤

Here’s how she came together 👇🏻

The Background (Papers)…

Cut some strips of white heavystock and splotched on a few layers of watery Speckled Egg and Chipped Sapphire paint…

Ended up adding a few darker strips later, then cut all in half again for extra stamp variety… 

Next came clear emboss ink + various holiday stamps + matching distress glazes and heat set, then one final top coat of collage medium to seal everything… love! 😍

I roughed up the paper edges with the distress wheel and glued the pieces down on the back panel of a framed panel set

The Frame…

I painted the frame from a framed panel with a mix of black soot + chipped sapphire

Then I taped my mini lights around the underside of the frame, leaving some of the strand out for my elf to hold

To hide my messy edges… I cut four strips of heavystock and painted with a mix of black soot + chipped sapphire, then I stamped the strips with the crackle stamp + princess gold powder and heat set

I trimmed them the exact length of each of the four sides, scored and trimmed the corners, then glued and clamped

The Elf…

I cut four of the elf from the Thin Ice set out of heavystock paper and drew on some of my own details

Once I had my layers cut and assembled, I glued together with collage medium and added an extra goopy layer on top to help blend some seams + add texture 

Next, liberally covered with clear emboss ink, sprinkled on Princess gold powder and heat set, followed by a wash of chipped sapphire paint to help define the levels/texture

The Winter Wonderland Letters…

WINTER… Used the Bigz Handmade font set to cut my winter letters from chipboard, using the negative space around the letter as a letter tile

Gave each letter the same treatment as the elf… Covered with clear emboss ink and Princess Gold powder then heat set, followed by a wash of Black Soot paint over the top to grunge them up a bit

Added a few mounting dots, painted with black soot

Wonderland… used the Tiny Type lower font and cut three sets from heavystock

Glued them down on a strip of clear acetate

The Trees…

Cut lots of Forest Shadows dies out of heavystock paper then added grit paste… once it was dry, I fully covered the smaller trees with Princess gold, only a sprinkling on the larger

For my snow banks… I cut the bases off of some unused trees, added gold embossing, followed by sprinkled on clear mica flakes

The Finishing Touches…

The crystal knob at the top is from the mini Hardware set

Added Hardware heads to the frame corners and more random gold embossing

Annnnd that’s how my project came together 🔚 Hope you like it! I sure enjoyed making it ☺️ Thanks so much for looking! Sending you all warm (and crafty) wishes! 💫

x Erin

The Products…

Surfaces… framed panel, mixed media heavystock paper, clear acetate

Dies… Thin Ice, Forest Shadows, Tiny type lower, Bigz handmade font

Mediums… collage medium, grit paste, clear mica flakes, clear embossing ink

Ranger Princess Gold Embossing powder

Stamps… crackle, holiday music, holiday tiny text

Distress paint… Speckled Egg, Chipped Sapphire, Black Soot

Ideaology… mini hardware, mini hardware heads

Other… mini mounting dots, heat tool, glass mat