The Advent of the Advent Calendar steampunk santa

If you have arrived here via the Artistic Stamper Creative Team Blog, you will know what this is all about... if you haven't then you wont LOL. As my project for this months 'designer' slot I have made a 'Mum's Advent Calendar' hope over to the blog to take a look. Each Day I will be revealing a daily tag, using some fab AS Stamps and I will be revealing a 'treat' - pop back each day and share my treat!

Here is today's tag - I so love this stamp!! Isn't he great?? Even though he was designed as Father Christmas, I think he could be used all year round on Steampunk projects as a 'Mad Professor' type person.

The background was coloured with Distress inks and then spritzed with water to blend the colours. Santa was then stamped onto the card using stazon, I then masked him out and overstamped with the AS Stars Background Stamp. Covered the whole thing with Versamark and then Clear UTEE. You need a couple of layers of UTEE to acheive a smooth finish. Around teh edges I sprinkled some gold, silver and red embossing powder. Since its christmas the cogs are a bit more colourful than normal, and are made with Tim's Cog die-cut from shrink plastic and then coloured and shrunk. (well what else do you do with shrink plastic?)

And my Advent Calendar treat?? A cup of Hot Chocolate with a dram of Brandy in it (YUM!) - you are welcome to join me!

All product in bold are available from The Artistic Stamper

Everyone else in the household has their own Advent Calendar - the children have ones made by my dearest and well loved late Aunt - boy do I miss her, but each year she is our thoughts everyday as the children find the pockets on their calendars




And this is Matt's, I cross-stitched it from a pattern in 'Family Circle' about 20 years ago, it has had quality street chocs hanging from it every year since - can you tell which his favourite ones are!