ombre christmas forever!

is it possible we're halfway through the year and haven't had an inspiration challenge yet at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥? well, yeah, apparently it is. but let's fix that right now:

ok, so, you know how these things work, right? you can take *ANY* aspect of the photo that you like from the sparkly tree, the ombre colors, the bauble shapes, the dark wood grain, the rattan of the shades, the... well, you get the idea. take as much or as little detail as you'd like from the photo, but let it inspire you! and heck, if it's not blindingly obvious which bits you've used, it couldn't hurt to mention that in your post, eh? ;) sometimes i'm pretty literal, so here's what i've made:

color burst pigment powders by ken oliver crafts painted onto scraps of strathmore watercolor paper then layered with liquitex flexible modeling paste. stencils: the crafter's workshop, heidi swapp, tim holtz, studio calico; patterned papers: blue fern studio, american crafts; gold cardstock: the paper co; white kromekote: the paper cut; emboidery floss: dmc; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

i confess the ombre baubles realllllllly delighted me. like to an, "i'd love to do an ombre tree like this someday" kind of level. but you know, it's july, so that's not very practical at the moment is it? so in the meantime, i've settled on just making my own rainbow ornaments and arranging them in a sort of cascade. i traced a few sizes of circle template onto scraps of watercolor paper painted with different shades of color burst.* they looked pretty good together but somehow they just weren't quiiiiite right. and then i thought, "TEXTURE!" so i stenciled a bit of white modeling paste onto each bauble et voila... suddenly they were a set! i mounted them onto a bit of lacy patterned paper, made some hanger-top-thingies out of scraps of gold paper, attached gold embroidery floss and matted the whole thing on a luscious dark wood grain paper. and at the risk of being an immodest so-and-so... i really like this one!

speaking of things to like, stephanie has made an incredibly lovely-- and incredibly *SPARKLY* card that i know will inspire the heck out of you, so head on over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ and check it out!

*one of the unexpected results of using liquid watercolor is that i seldom use ALL of every color i've mixed in whatever project i'm working on at the time. and let's face it, i'm a "saver"... so since i save the offcuts of the watercolor paper, i might as well paint them with the leftover color bursts, right? sometimes i paint little patches or stripes or practice brush lettering; sometimes i combine the extra colors and paint a solid patch of the new shade; sometimes i will layer tonight's colors OVER last night's or last week's. it depends on what kind of mood i'm in. sometimes the "use it up" page actually starts to turn into something interesting, and i make it into a finished piece, like these circles or these stripes. sometimes i just keep the little painted pieces to use for backgrounds or diecuts. if nothing else, this method lets me try absolutely anything i feel like doing, without worrying that i'm "wasting paint"... which is definitely a good thing! ♥