Hello Maja Design fans and friends!  Nancy Hanttula here again…..this time to share a Christmas mixed media project I created with the gorgeous Vintage Winter paper collection.  And as I am having a blog give-away of this entire paper collection this month, I wanted to share a new project I had created with it.  AND I am thinking this would be a great present for someone on my Christmas list this year.

So here is how I created this project:

Step 1 – I picked my patterns for the background and decoupaged them down onto a 18 x 24 inch canvas.

step 2 – Once the background had dried, I wanted to soften the collaged effect by adding some acrylic paint.  I applied the paint using an old credit card.

 The purpose of this step was to soften the background and make it appear more cohesive.

step 3 – At this point, I started creating my basic snowman shape.  I used 3 different sized white foam balls.

I bought some special “Foam” cutting tools, but a serrated knife (and actually I used my husband’s hand saw on the largest ball) would work just as well I think. But with that said, these tools only cost a couple of dollars, and they did file the foam pretty nicely.

I did my best to cut each of the foam balls in half.  Like I mentioned before, I did use a hand-saw on the largest one, as the foam cutting knife just wasn’t long enough to go through easily.

Before gluing the foam down, I wanted to make sure that my snowman parts fit together.  I filed away a portion of the middle and lower foam balls so that the snowman parts would flow slightly into the lower section. Hopefully, the next photo explains this step better.

This is when the foam filing tool came in handy to smooth the edges.  And below is all of the snowman fitting together nicely.

Step 4 – I then glued the foam pieces down to the background.  For this step, I used E6000 glue in the center and your basic household caulk for the outer edge (found at local hardware stores, Walmart, etc.)

I used caulk for this so that if any of the white where to come out of the sides it wouldn’t be a big deal (easy to clean up too) AND it gives the snowman good staying power.

I centered the snowman just low enough onto the canvas to give plenty of room to add  a fun and whimsical hat to the top of my snowman’s head.

I gave the glue and caulk a full 24 hours to dry.

step 5 – After making sure my snowman had good adherence, I wanted to add a snowy textured effect to my foam.  Now, granted, you could easily forgo this step, as I rather liked the look of the foam for my snowman.  But during the process, I did manage to put a few fingerprint dents into my foam here and there…so I decided to texture it up a bit.  Using the very same caulk that I used to adhere the foam balls down, I pretty much iced it over the foam, much like you would do icing on a cake.

Again, I let the caulk dry a full day.

step 6 – Next, I created my snowman’s hat.  I found these cute little felt hats at my local craft store (less that $2 a piece.)

I cut the backside off of the hat so that I could adhere it down properly.

I wanted to construct and adhere the hat before giving the snowman his face, because I needed to know just how much “face” would be showing once he was wearing his hat.

I then added all sorts of fun embellishments to the hat.  First, I added some greenery trim and a glittered poinsettia.  I used hot glue to adhere all of my hat decorations.

Next I added a little tree, decorated it with miniature Christmas tree decorations,  added some little presents, another white poinsettia and some snowflakes.  I did bend my tree so that it had a bit of a quirky, whimsical look to it.

And here is the finished hat.

I glued the hat down to the top by generously applying hot glue to the inner hat brim and putting it firmly down onto the head.

step 7 – I created a scarf for my snowman using 2 of the Vintage Winter red patterned papers (Christmas is Coming & the backside of Season’s Greetings).  To make the long scarf pieces, I cut two strips of paper

sprayed them with water on both sides, and distressed, scrunched, and manipulated the paper to achieve a cloth-like look.  After the pieces were dry, I arranged them along my snowman’s neck, gluing them down with hot-glue.

step 8 – To create my snowman’s eyes, smile, and row of buttons, I used some black river rocks, (purchased ages ago from my local craft store.)

Again, I used hot glue to adhere my rocks.

step 9 – For my snowman’s arms….I went out into my front yard and snapped a few twigs off of my tree.  To adhere them, I punched them into the foam….then pulled them out, filled the hole I had made with hot-glue, and then pushed them right back into the hole now filled with glue….worked like a dream.

step 10 – I created my carrot nose using some heavyweight orange cardstock.  I rolled it into a narrow pointed cone shape and glued it together. Using the same basic steps as inserting the twigs (arms), I pushed the nose into the foam, pulled it out, filled the hole with hot-glue and then pushed the nose back into the glue.

step 11 – For the last step, I added some dimensional wood and die-cut snowflake pieces to the background.

I really enjoyed creating this project….and just love the dimension that I was able to achieve without a lot of weight.

I used almost the entire Vintage Winter paper collection on the background for this project.

Other supplies used here, but not already mentioned, included:  embellishments and felt hat purchased at my local craft store, chipboard/wood pieces from LYB, Kaisercraft, & Tattered Angels; Mod Podge matte decoupage medium, & Dermacoat white acrylic paint.

Thanks for looking! and I hope this has inspired you to create something magical today!