Bah Humbug!

Hello friends. I’m back to share my second make for the Tim Holtz idea-ology Christmas LIVE. If you missed the LIVE, you can catch the replay and see all the incredible inspiration makes over on Tim’s blog.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is one of my favourite stories and Ebenezer Scrooge one of my favourite fictional characters. I think that’s where my love of top hats began. This is where the inspiration for this make came from. Let’s get into the details…

First, I had to choose my base and as you probably know, I love a dome, and the idea-ology Reliquary Dome is one of my favourites. It’s large enough to really tell a story in. I painted the cork base with black soot distress paint and covered the top with paper from the idea-ology Christmas backdrops. This paper is giving serious humbug mint vibes! If you look closely you’ll see I cut some lines into the paper covered cork using the new tonic media ruler and tonic craft knife. These are to push the paper dolls and ephemera into.

Last year Tim released an idea-ology paper dolls pack with his Christmas release and this dapper chap with his magnificent top hat was in that pack and it screamed Scrooge to me. I pulled it out with a couple of the paper dolls from the same pack which had ghosts of Christmas past and present vibes and coloured them with distress pencils and a water brush.

I added a line of distress collage medium into the cuts and carefully pushed the paper dolls in.

I used stickers from the idea-ology Christmas sticker book to help tell my story…

The ghosts of Christmas past and present.

I love this piece of ephemera from the idea-ology Christmas ephemera pack. I trimmed it, added some walnut stain distress ink to grunge it up and slid it into one of the cuts in the cork base. Using the craft pick I made a hole in the cork and added distress collage medium and then pushed in a quill from the idea-ology adornments quill and arrows pack.

I added a candestick from the idea-ology 2023 The Manor set with a drippy candle and some candy cane twine.

With my finger, I rubbed some picket fence distress paint onto the idea-ology pinecones and let air dry before adding them to the reliquary dome cork base with a little distress collage medium.

Of course it wouldn’t be complete without a bottle, so I dripped uncharted mariner distress paint into an idea-ology tiny vial and let dry. I added a label, remnant rubs which I cut up to spell out “ink” and some twine. Finally I added the tiniest wax seal by dropping one drop of red sealing wax onto my non stick craft mat and using a pin head to push into the wax, removing once it had set. I carefully peeled the wax seal off the non stick mat and attached to the bottle with distress collage medium.

Taking one of the book covers from the idea-ology Christmas ephemera pack, I made a mini book and attached “humbug” from the idea-ology Christmas stickers book to the front. I have a step by step on how to make the tiny books HERE.

I added some more drippy candles to the cork base with distress collage medium.

And to finish I wound twine around the glass dome several times and glued on an idea-ology Christmas shape seal which I painted with black soot distress paint, rubbing away some of the paint from the star and edges of the seal to expose the metal.

Thanks for stopping by, let me know if you have any questions and Bah Humbug!
Zoe

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