Merry Christmas

Just a cute Christmas card with a different color scheme.

 This adorable Santa is from Magnolia and colored with distress re-inkers.

 The ticket is stamped on thin craft paper and embossed twice with clear/ gold-glitter.

 Flowers in blue-brown and cream.

 White acrylic paint will get you that snow feeling.

In the challenges:
Tildas Town
Live and love crafts
Magnolia down under challenges
Stamp and create with magnolia

Love Julia

Christmas light

How is it that 24 days can go so fast? Trying to get all the presents, baking stuff and working... I think the only thing to do is to make December a red month.
Any how I have been working rather late, having riding lessons at the riding school so when I get home it´s pitch black. But with just a few lights the home goes from cold and dark to worm and inviting.

So here I my three tips.

have a pretty glass vase? Put some light in and at night it´s like firefly, so pretty!

 So at the first of the advent we put up this stars for the first time and I just love it.

 And speaking if love here are my lanterns that I just think is the prettiest. The more colors and and shapes you have the cozier the room gets. The shadows from the lanterns on the wall can change a room and even when you don´t have a candle in them they are still pretty.

 So bring some light in now in the cold winter and sing some songs today to remember Lucia
Love Julia

DIY Christmas ornaments

The Christmas madness continues and it´s time for some DIY/ makeover! We all have tones of cheap plastic ornaments that are just... bhla. But with some book-pages and they´ll look really cute and will fit in perfectly with all of you how has shabby chic/ vintage decor. How ever I know I uselessly say how fun and easy my projects are... This is quite time consuming and requires allot of patients. Well worth it though.

 So thin glue (I have wallpaper paste), ornaments, old brush and book pages in small pieces.

 Start with glue add paper and then glue. The thing is that the old book page is it´s takes some time to lay down flat. So you´ll have to work with it...

 In the end it´s all worth it, for me it took about 30 min to do one. Maybe if one starts of with new-paper , the book pages as something to grab on to. Of course I thought of this while I took the photos, if you´ll try it, please let me know. And if you want to add some extra, mix glue and glimmer/glitter/ crushed eye-shadow and paint away.

Love Julia

Butterscotch!

It´s time to start the Christmas-candy-workshop and I know just what to start with. Butterscotch is by far my favorite and so easy to make. I found the recipe Here, it´s in Swedish so I will do my best to translate it for you.

Ingredients:
100g Butter
3 dl sugar
2 dl cream
1 dl light syrup
1 tps vanilla sugar

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan (with a thick bottom). When the butter has melted add the other ingredients and stir. Now this is to boil to it´s 122-125°C then poor it in a pan and let cool. Use a knife or succors to cut it up. 

I sprinkled some sea salt or it while it was cooling down and it is delicious! I only hope there will be some left for Christmas... 

Love Julia

Shabby chic ornaments

We have had our first snowstorm for this winter and now the roads are so icy that you can use your ice-skates. So lets just say that I will stay in today, and why not making some Christmas stuff?
I found this necklace at H&M made out of this beads, I would never have used it so I took it apart and I´m going to use the beads for Christmas ornaments.

 So some crystal-looking beads. pearls, wire and pliers.

Put the bead on the wire













Put a pearl on one end and bend the wire


















Take the bead down over the bent wire and twist the other end till you get a shape like this.








Cut of the excess of and shape it.

Now make some more, I made 24... This are perfect for all of you shabby chic lovers and for you how love reusing things. 

Love Julia

Winter reef

Remember my Halloween reef? Using the same Styrofoam reef I have made it winter teamed. It´s super easy and you can use thing you find in your garden.

So here are the basic materials, the reef, siccers, pins, fabric and twigs.

 Make strips out of the fabric, about 10 cm, use the pins to keep them in place.

 Wind the fabric strips around the reef in till it looks like this.

 Make smaller fabric strips, like 2-3 cm and use them to wind around the twigs.

 Decorated with rose-hip,paper roses and a little bird, it´s a cute winter teamed reef.

Love Julia

Vintage Christmas card

I have a new card to show you, I though of showing you an old one, but then  I though; "Better not..." ( Yes I´m a big "Pitch Perfect" fan)

So here is my vintage Christmas card:

I wanted to try something different, vintage with a pinch of Christmas. 

 This little girl in her winter fur fits perfect. Just look at her eyes, I bet some one just told her that it´s snowing. She is from a sheet from Melissa Frances filled with vintage photos.

 The roses where withe in the start but not for long... I took and mixed red ink and some gold glimmer to a glimmer mist and sprayed the flowers. In the center there is some brown glimmer mist for some depth.

 Tilda is colored with distress ink and then there is fran-tage in shabby white around her.

I wanted to make a card that incorporated Christmas not letting it take over. So with neutral papers, lace and pearls then we have some Christmas elements. 

Love Julia

A bit of nature

I love Christmas for so many reasons. One of them is this thing we do with bringing nature in to our homes. I mean I get that we have some flower or a pretty stone but a hole tree? How ever odd it is I love it and today I´m going to show you how to bring in a bit of nature, not a hole forest.

To make this you´ll need a glass (this used to be a candle  that I just cleaned out) , a elastic and some twigs.

Start of by breaking them in to the size that fits your glass. Mine are a bit taller then the glass. Then you put the elastic around the glass. 

 Now, put in the twigs one by one in the elastic.

To get that nature look I very the twigs, some small and some a bit thicker. 

 When the glass is covered you can take a fancy ribbon around to hide the elastic.

I just took this fabric, tore a strip and tied it around in a bow.

Really easy and looks great inside in the waiting for the Christmas tree. 

Love Julia

Christmas fair

Happy Monday! I´m just going to start of by saying how much I love Advent, on the first all the lights come up in the windows and at night it´s almost magic.
But now, here are some pictures of my first Christmas fair behind the tables.

This day was so cold and I had so much clothes on I cloud hardly move.

 Here is the jeweler frame I made last week, it works beautifully.

 Allot of pearls...

 Guess how had the table next to me... My grandmother! She made this beautiful candles.

So now when it´s officially Christmas times I have holiday music on and you can expect allot of holiday projects :)

Love Julia

Beautiful Sweden

It´s my 19th year in this country called Sweden. This country has it all, the rain, the sun and the nature. It´s really amazing year round and November is not exemption. Even though I some times get sick of the rain or fear I´m going to freeze to an ice-cube, I love living here.

And right now it looks something like this...

My mom and I goes on this walks in our village with our cameras, she really is a geek ;)

If your inspiration isn´t flowing, this walks are perfect to get it going.

Love Julia

DIY Jewelry frame

It´s just two days to my first Christmas fair, behind the table. I´m so excited and a bit nerves. There is so much to do. So today I´m showing you how i´m going to show my earrings.
The frame I found cheaply at a second hand store. Painted white (x2) and then a coat with pearl.
Materials:
-Frame
-chicken wire
-wire scissors
-fabric + regular scissors
-staple gun






Start with staple down the chicken wire












Then stable down the fabric. Stretch it out and put down like you do a tire. When it´s put down, fold the leftover over and staple them down.










And it´s finished! And yes i did this in my dads workshop :).

So to sum up.
Super easy and fun. The black fabric will make your jewelry pop

Love Julia

Yellow!

By now you probably know that yellow is not my favorite color. You may also know that I like to challenge myself. And I have so, today´s card is all blue and YELLOW.

So here is all the info:
Papers: DCWV- Mademoiselle stack
Stamp: Magnolia- Charming Edwin
Embossingpowders: Magnolia- Black
                               Stampendous- Shabby white
Washitape: Panduro- lace
Roses: Pyhobby (white) - colored with own mixed glimmer mist
Paper-bag: Julia K ;)
Pebbles:  Julia
Pearls: Pyhobby- white

By now, after making cards and art journal pages, I realize that I don´t mind yellow any more.
Love Julia K

Sun Light -art journalpage

 Some times it´s the simplest things that makes the biggest impact. Just a black pen is all you need.

 The background is regular clear glue mixed with liquid pearl and distress ink- mustered seed. I used a roller to smear it out. When it´s almost dry, sprayed with water.

 By spraying water on you get that watercolor effect.

Some thinks it´s scary to draw with black pens but if you build up with allot of lines on one can tell if you made one line wrong. 

The thing about a art journal- smash book is to try out new things, I used to avoid yellow but now I tackle it head on.
Love Julia