Christmas Wishes

I created today’s art journal page to send you Christmas wishes – wishing you all a safe and happy Christmas filled with peace and love!

I started by covering the page with Pébéo white gesso and then I spread some clear glitter glue over the top using a palette knife. All the festive images were cut from old magazines and stuck in place using a glue stick.  I splattered white acrylic paint around the edges of the images and left it to dry.

The black circles were stamped onto some white tissue paper using a Snow Day stamp set from BoBunny, some black Archival Ink and black Papermania Embossing Powder; they were stuck down using a glue stick. I added some texture over the white background around the images by applying Ranger Texture Paste though a Sparkle stencil from Tim Holtz; I love the white on white effect that this created. When dry, I finished the page by adding the “Christmas Wishes” wording which was recycled from an old Christmas card.

One of our Christmas traditions is to treat ourselves to a Festive Feast sandwich from our local deli in town; it’s filled with stuffing, turkey, bacon, sausage, cranberry sauce and mayonnaise (grin!).

They make sandwiches to takeaway so we bought the sandwich home to enjoy with one of the beers from our homemade advent calendar. This Belgian IPA had a fruity finish and tasted of coriander and orange peel, and both the beer and the sandwich were very yummy (double grin!).

This past week, we’ve loved all of the beers that we have tried from our advent calendar so as T Stands for Tuesday, I thought I’d share some of the other beers with you and say a big hello to the T Gang – cheers and Happy T day!

This one is specially brewed for Aldi by Brewdog Brewery and there is an interesting story behind this beer. It started with Aldi supermarket selling a copy of Brewdog’s flagship beer, so Brewdog then made a beer called YALDI IPA and launched it on Twitter (Brewdog is in Scotland and “yaldi” is apparently slang for happiness). Aldi replied on Twitter to Brewdog saying “would have gone with ALD IPA, send us a crate and we’ll talk”. Apparently the customer enquiries went through the roof after their conversation on Twitter, so they got together and Aldi now sell this beer as a special edition; it’s marketed as their “own label IPA”.

Erika will be pleased that we have tried this Push Pineapple beer too; I was looking forward to trying this one myself and it didn’t disappoint! This is a Pineapple Milkshake IPA; it is called “milkshake” as it contains lactose which gives a creamier mouth feel and makes the beer sweeter as brewer’s yeast can’t ferment it. Lactose is traditionally used in stouts to give them a sweeter and creamer taste. This beer had a lovely pineapple flavoured finish too – so delicious (grin!).

Wishing you all a safe and happy Christmas!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of the materials that were used to create this art journal page:

• Pébéo White Gesso
• Glitter Glue (Clear)
• Art Discount Acrylic Paint (White)
• Old magazines
• Pritt Stick
• Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous Mixed Media Stencil (Sparkle THS132)
• Ranger Texture Paste
• Recycled white tissue paper
• BoBunny Stamp Set (Snow Day)
• Ranger Archival Ink (Jet Black)
• Papermania Embossing Powder (Black)
• Recycled Christmas Card Topper
• X-Press It! double-sided foam tape

Challenges I’m glad I found out about Challenge Blogs, as they provide me with inspiration and are a wonderful way to meet like-minded arty people. So here are the challenges I’m joining today: I’m pleased to join the lovely Tracey over at Art Journal Journey and her Meaning of challenge this month as I created this page to send you happy Christmas wishes. I’m joining in the fun over at Country View Challenges and their Anything Christmas challenge with my Christmas page. I’m also pleased to join the Celebrate challenge over at Simon Say Stamp Monday Challenge Blog as I’m celebrating Christmas with this page. I’m happy to join the MIUCB #44 – Anything Goes + optional twist of Clean and Simple challenge over at Mix It Up Challenge Blog with the techniques I used to create the clean and simple white on white background. I’m also joining Paperbabe Stamps and their #134 – Anything Goes challenge with my Christmas Wishes page. I’m also pleased to join the Merry Little Christmas Challenge and their MLCCB #28 – December Anything Christmas Goes with my Christmas page too.