Moxie Fab: Holiday Home Decor

Mom: We all think that your idea for a homemade Christmas is wonderful.  SO, please stop reading. This gift is for you. :)  Love you!

Hello, friends!  I've been dying to play along with one of the holiday challenges at Moxie Fab World.  I've had an idea brewing for the Holiday Home Decor Challenge ever since I made this card, and today I finally got to make it.  Yippee!

I realize that the home decor projects published in Paper Crafts are on a smaller scale, but I didn't just want to make a project for a contest.  I wanted to make a project for someone. My mother always decorated for all the holidays, and I loved it.  I try to decorate for major holidays but certainly on a much smaller scale, especially since I now have to have everything higher than 4 1/2 feet off the ground (approximately the height my toddler can reach standing on a chair).  I know this is pretty large, but I wanted my home decor project to be something my mother could use.  So I turned on the Christmas music (I can't believe I broke my own rule of not listening to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving!) to get myself into the Spirit of Christmas and got to work.

My family knows I love making banners.  I've made lots.  But this is my first Christmas banner.  Is it simple?  Yes.  But I think that is the beauty of it.  I kept experimenting, but in the end took pretty much all the embellishments off.  I wanted attention to be drawn to the images and the message of the Savior's birth that they portray, and everything I tried seemed liked they distracted rather than enhanced that message.  I'm so happy with how the banner turned out.  I think it will look beautiful hanging on my parents mantle with one of my mom's nativities displayed above it.

 

I used relatively few supplies to make the banner.  The star of the show is Papertrey's Star of Wonder stamps.  All the images and the sentiments (with a little masking on the "Glory to God" sentiment) come from this set.  The patterned paper are from various My Mind's Eye collections.

Besides making the medallions, the only tricky thing was stamping the images in brown ink and then re-stamping them in Versamark, so I could put some clear embossing powder on top.  I love how the embossing deepens the color so much.  Speaking of color, I was pretty excited about the hints of blue/blue-ish green in the papers.  I thought it took a pretty traditional color scheme and upped it just a notch...plus my favorite color is blue, so I was happy to sneak that in there, and I bet my mom will notice, too. :)

Oh, and I had to point out the clothespins.  I almost always use clothespins to hang my banners, but these ones are a bit fancier than usual and serve a dual purpose.  I covered them (which is so simple to do that I cannot believe I haven't done it before), but my favorite part is that they are magnetic.  I was trying to think of where I could hang the banner to have at least decent light and realized the door would be the best bet....and it happens to be magnetic. So I decided to make the clothespins into magnets.  

Now my mom can use them to hold papers on the fridge after Christmas.  Hee.  Silly little things like this make me happy.  Thanks for taking a look! I hope you enjoyed your weekend, especially those in the United States who had an extended weekend because of Labor Day.

  

Supplies

Stamps: Star of Wonder (PTI)
Ink: Cranberry (CTMH), Sage Shadow (SU!), Tea Dye Duo (PTI), Walnut Stain (Tim Holtz), VersaMark
Paper: Rustic Cream (PTI), Lost & Found, Lost & Found Two, Signature Christmas (MME), Union Square (Recollections)
Other: clear embossing powder (CTMH), 1 3/4" punch, clothespins, twine