Christmas Village - The Unveiling!

And here is the completed Village! From this side you can see the working train and the retired train sitting behind the depot.

If you click on the first picture after reading the dialog, you can see more detail in the larger pictures.







Guess I should take a shot at night with just the lights on too. This angle shows the server off to the back.












Here is the buffet. There's a lot of activity in this countryside neighborhood...a fox hunt, skating on a lake and critters peaking out from behind bushes and buildings. By the way, my fox outsmarts the hunters and dogs every time!








Here they are just starting off.















 Here is one-half of the large table. The tree is decorated and lite, Santa is riding on his sleigh high above the activity, people and buying, selling, enjoying the town.

 

 This shows Ebenezer Scooge's house and the graveyard to the side where the ghosts lead him around.










Here is the skating rink and people out and about.

This is the server with the theatre and church.













 And here is a shot with the lights on this evening. If I make the room totally dark all you see in the picture is little dots, ha!

After this I will start on cards again. But this is my other seasonal outlet for creativity.

Christmas Village - The Building

You think I'm kidding? The Building refers to the putting of the village together! I took a few shots of the process.


I started collecting Dept.56 Dickens Village Series buildings and accessories in 1991. Up until this house, I had plenty of room to put the village up every year. This house is smaller and is a challenge, however, if we sacrifice the entire dining room and eat meals on the lanai (pool porch) or on trays in the living room, there's plenty of space :)




I start with removing everything off of all the pieces of furniture I want to use. In this year's case it is the table, server and buffet. We stationed the table in the center but toward the window, I put on a lined, plastic tablecloth, large cardboard for protection, Christmas tablecloth and then we brought in the 4 x 8' sheet of plywood my husband built for me in the beginning.





Next comes the 1/2" piece of styrofoam, a correct-cut amount of batting (=snow) and I'm ready to build the train. The train is from the 1950/60's and still runs.

The holes you see in the stare to help run wires thru. Otherwise, they all have to make it to an edge, which is hard to do.










Then all the buildings are placed and wires run, connected and tested.







When it is all powered up the greenery and rest of the accessories are added. Here you can see the skating rink, town Christmas tree and street lights have been added.






Of course I forgot the batting this year until all the buildings were on and wired so husband Bob helped me correct the mistake!









Here you can see the buffet has activity on it.









This shows it before all the big greenery and trees were in. And the next blog will show the completed scenes with some close up.


Hope you had fun, I know its been a busy week for me!

Mono...2

So, as promised, here is my 2nd attempt. As I am trying to increase my Christmas card stock, this one is also a seasonal card.

This time I took a small stamp and stamped in light pink around the card. Then I used a darker-light pink and filled in the spaces. Finally, I picked it up and highlighted the stamp in red. I placed it all on my home made pink cardstock.

It really is a fun technique.

I'm going to join in on a challenge with this card. Craft Rocket Challenges has its home in the UK and is a new challenge site.
Click on the link below to visit them.

I will feature this on:
Mark's Finest Papers challenge #286; and
Word Art Wednesday challenge #208
Craft Rocket Challenges - November Challenge

Monochromatic Images

My dad retired after 40 years of working for the Eastman Kodak company, mainly in Atlanta, GA. That is where I grew up. Whenever I hear a word like monochromatic, I think of dad and all his years in the film industry.

So monochromatic (I just like saying that word, ha!) basically means layered hues [of color]. The challenge this week for Mark's Finest Papers is to layer colors on the background, starting with the lightest and progressing to darker.

On my first attempt I used a large stamp for the background and the sentiment was to draw the color out more. My little popped up tree shows off real well against the monotone color. I did a second card using another smaller stamp and will feature it on the next post.

This will be used for:

MFP Challenge #286
Word Art Wednesday
The Outlawz Challenges - Saturday's Paper a la Mode