December Challenge - In The Deep Midwinter

I cannot believe it is the 1st of December, where has this year gone. But it's time for the new challenge theme and this month it is "In The Deep Midwinter" think frosty fun, make something and upload it with the linky at the end of this post.

You can enter up to three times and the only rule is, you must use something available from the Happy Daze Shop. There is a £15.00 voucher which will be won by one randomly selected entry.

Here are a few DT Items to inspire you.

By Lucy

By Mandy

By Carol

Looking forward to seeing your entries.

June Guest - Lucy Edmondson - An Altered Bottle

I was so thrilled to be asked to Guest for Happy Daze this month, and for the first of my three contributions I have made this altered bottle. I wanted to go for a giant perfume bottle look. It started life as a glass bubble bath bottle like this:-

After removing all the labels, I painted it with a pinky beige acrylic paint and then stamped it with the Prima en francais script stamp in Victorian Velvet Distress Ink. I then used the pattern stamp from the Artistic Outpost 'Jane's Countryside' set and wrapped it around my hand and used a dabbing motion with Sepia ink, blotting it as I went along. These two stamps created more of a texture than a pattern. I dabbed a bit of Sepia on my finger and ran it around the raised circular part of the bottle to emphasize it. So at this stage it looked like this:-

These are the stamp sets I used:-

Next I used the Lost Coast Designs 'Labels' stamp set. I stamped the 'Violette Flor' perfume bottle label onto a cotton coaster (I buy these in packs of 10 from Poundland), using Sepia ink. I then used the other two perfume label stamps to make shrink plastic tags for the neck of the bottle, colouring them on the reverse with Pro Markers.

A better view of the shrink plastic tags:-

I adhered the coaster to the centre of the bottle and added a pressed Viola flower, sealed with a little matte medium. I wrapped a pocket watch style necklace from a car boot sale around the neck of the bottle and added the tags on jump rings. To finish off, I added a piece of lace to the neck, and some Liquid Pearls to the opening. I had planned on replacing the original stopper but it didn't look right. I was also going to add lots of little flowers etc, but Mr Less Is More told me to step away from the craft room!

I am using my finished bottle to hold artificial flowers:-