fall mantle

election time!!!!!!  i hope you all go out and vote - remember you can't bit** if you didn't bother to participate!  as broken as the system is (and i do believe it is broken) your vote is all you have!

poor little pezza is STILL coughing up a storm.  she just finished a huge breakfast and then informed us she was going to be growing today because she is turning 6 on thursday :P  i can't believe she is turning 6 wow!  she is such a funny, interesting, crazy kid!

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don't forget to join us on Color Me Creative for our current Mixed Media challenge - altering a die cut!  Lots of great prizes up for grabs!

You can also join in on one of my Mixed Media Classes on CMC too!  a third one is coming soon!

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So what do i have to show you today?  my fall decor - finally finished!  my halloween/fall decorating had not been updated in WELL over a decade.  it was kinda sad AND not really what i wanted anymore either.  not to mention sparse as pieces have been getting thrown out too.  SO i decided to do something that is more fall and less halloween only and also something that i could update each season.  here is what i came up with.

these are the two shelves on either side of the tv:

our mantle has been neglected for the most part since we built this house 8 years ago so i finally remedied that too

 i may still make some adjustments/additions but i am LOVING it for now!  and those large paintings were my starting point.

 i had the idea for making them in my head for quite awhile and built the rest of it around them.

the backgrounds are a mix of collage and acrylic paint, stamping, Silks glaze, and textured mediums.

this is a great way to use up some of your older papers too!  here you can see papers peaking through, fun stamping using the new Inkadinkado Stamping Gear for the circular motif (just saw them available in Michaels yesterday!), more stamping using bubble wrap and accenting with black stabilo pencil.

in addition i added some texture using ceramic stucco medium mixed with Luminarte Primary elements and a stencil.  you can also see the subtle yellow Silks glaze.

i also wanted to give the pieces a "ground" - for this i used glass bead medium again mixed with luminarte primary elements.

most of my focal images are die cuts done on my Black Cat cutter and come from Digi Scrap Kits except for the cat above which i drew myself and cut out.

i love the way these turned out and already have some christmas ones planned!