Whiff of Joy DT for the Whiff of Joy Challenge - Let it snow

Hello Everyone! I hope you have been having a good Weekend. We took advantage of the sunshine today and went out to visit of one of my favourite National Trust Properties, Clandon Park near Guildford. They had special tours of the house today showing how they cleaned the precious antiques before putting the house 'to bed' for the Winter and we also had a tour of the attic which is normally out of bounds. I loved seeing the areas that had not been restored yet in the attic, the worn wood and scraps of precious antique wallpapers still on the walls and distressed by the passage of time are almost as inspiring as the beautifully preserved rooms which are normally open to view.
I have been doing a bit of distressing of my own for the Whiff of Joy Challenge. The Challenge theme this fortnight is 'Let it Snow' and I have decorated a bauble shaped decoration for my tree using the adorable 'Penguin's first Snow' image which was released this month at Whiff of Joy.

To make the decoration, I started with a papier mache bauble shape which I painted with picket fence crackle paint and then made it crackle with my heat gun before taking the colour back with distress inks. I stamped snowflakes with Perfect Medium and then heat embossed them with silver glitter embossing powder and also dragged the pad around the edges in some places and added more powder to create embossed edges to the ornament shape. I added a strip of burlap trim which I then topped with a Martha Stewart doily shape and then made some snowflake embellishments by die cutting snowflakes from glitter card using the Whiff of Joy snowflake die. I added a bow from vintage seam binding topped with a pearl brad .
I die cut a banner shape using the Whiff of Joy banner die and added a sentiment from the Christmas Banner set. I coloured the adorable Penguin using my Promarkers and glittered him before cutting him out and added him to the card with foam pads. As a finishing touch I added a little gem. I took the photos outside at Clandon Park for a change. I really enjoyed making this bauble as it was something a little different for me and this will have pride of place on my tree this year :-)
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Jane
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