12 Days of Christmas: Day 6- Very Skelly Advent Shrine

Welcome back to 12 Days of Christmas on Smeared and Smudged! If today is your first visit and you don't know what it's all about, please visit this post for all the info, and be sure to hop back from the beginning to see all the amazing projects that the Jolly Bloggers have posted so far. We are half way through the hop, and I can tell you that we Smeared and Smudgers definitely have a different and fun way of sharing Christmas projects, and I am truly honored to have such a great group of Jolly Bloggers joining me in the celebration and inspiration!

Today I have made for you a Very Skelly Advent Shrine. I started with an old metal bookend that I found at Goodwill. I spray painted it white, and added some punchinella insert behind the opening. The next step was to cover the front with some spackle, and while wet I stamped into it with one of my background stamps from the Smeared Ink Urban Decay set. You can't really see any definite pattern, but it gave it some cool texture! Then I sprinkled it with glitter, which made it look alot like sparkly snow.



The little hanging balls are from some fake holly (like what's up in the corner). After searching for something small enough to make my advent days (and bitching to Kelli on the phone about it lol) I finally found these in my Christmas deco box. I just snipped them off the branch and twisted the wire that was already attached, then added the wonky numbers with paint pen.



The top decoration is just some Christmas picks that I put together and attached. I stamped out my candycane Skelly from A Very Skelly Christmas, also from Smeared Ink, in red stazon and cut him out. Then I added some crystal glaze and clear mini beads from our odds n' ends section of our shop. When he dried, I attached him so it looks like he's sitting on top of the pinecone.



The candle holder is removable, so I can really put anything there in the front that I want to. Since it's an advent, I can take off a ball each day in December and add them to a little holder, or just leave them there. What I really love about it is it's Christmas-ey, but still has some cool style to it with the Skelly and texture.

I hope it's given you some ideas as well. Be sure to hop on through the Jolly Bloggers (list is in the sidebar), and if you're in the running as a Merry Hopper, be sure you're commenting on each blog to qualify for the prize drawing! See you all on Monday.

Time Flies Altered Calendar

Hi everyone! I have a great project to share with you today, one that has been sitting in the back of my closet for some time now. I actually forgot that I had purchased this item to alter a while back, and found it behind my paper rack a couple of weeks ago. Then it sat (again) until I had the chance to sit down and do something to it. Finally yesterday I threw my hands in the air, said "screw everything", and sat my butt down to stamp. My house suffered, but I still managed to feed my kids and get my Smeared Ink orders out like I should, ha ha!

So, the item that I am talking about is this wooden calendar that I found at Goodwill. It cost about a dollar and a half, and worth every penny. Of course there was NO WAY that I could leave it the way it is...as you can see in the pic, it is definitely NOT my style. I like cows and all, but not enough to hang on my wall and look at every day.




You can see that the calendar has these little wooden tiles that slide in and out for you to arrange the dates, plus some tiles with a month on each side and some with holiday pictures. Pretty cool cause you can add those in if you want them.

To start altering, I coated the base with a black glitter paint. Then I added in other layers of paint, including beige, copper, gold, pink, and red nail polish. After all the layers dried, I tore up some old book pages and modge-podged them onto the background.

I stamped my image from the Muertos Doll stamp set from Bombshell stamps. I used coffee and watercolor crayons to color him in, then added a blood red heart using nail polish. I cut him out and arranged him on my base. Although I modge podged over him as well, I left his right hand out because I wanted to add some dimension.

Then I stamped, colored, and cut out my little flying clocks from the Rise and Shine Bombshell set. I added them to my base, with one going into my doll's right hand. A pop dot was placed behind the right hand to bring it forward. I also hand wrote my days of the week with black and white paint marker.

The final step on the base was to add my embellishments and my saying; "Time Flies When You're Having Fun", also from the Rise and Shine set. My embellishments are tiny watch pieces and gears. As the muertos doll catches the clocks, they spew out their innards! Kinda gross when you put it that way, but I thought it was cute at the time. I also added some larger washers and gears onto the shelves to complete the look.

To change up my tiles to match, all I did was color them with a gold foil pen. I decided to keep the original holiday pictures that were on the tiles, and the original words.

So in the first picture you can see that there are some blank tiles to fill in the spaces where there are no numbers; those are just the holiday tiles turned over. The second pic shows without those in place. The last two pics are closeups of the details.

I hope you enjoy!!!! I'd love to hear what you think about my project; I adore it and will be hanging it on my kitchen wall!


*click pics for larger view