Guest Designer - Maggi Harding

Please welcome our Guest Designer for the Christmas in July challenge.  Meet Maggi Harding from Scrap, Travel and Bark who was the Top Pick from the You're My Inspiration challenge.

Hi, I'm Maggi Harding and I am thrilled to be guest designing the Frilly and Funkie Challenge Blog.

My style is all over the board as I do a little bit of everything, but two things I really love, are vintage styling and bright bold colors layered up. Paper art is an artistic adventure for me; I always ask myself, what can I create, how can I make this piece of paper come to life? I love the challenge of combining paper and medias to create a cohesive art piece. Paper art awakens my “inner artist” and satisfies the creative side of my brain that was long neglected during my career as a CPA. These days I am a happy retired, stay at home, crazy, paper loving scrap artist living with the loves of my life, my husband and my 2 standard poodles kids.

I am so tickled to be guest designing for the Frilly and Funkie Challenge Blog! The challenge this time is so fun, and practical too, because it's all about Christmas. You know you are never ready for Christmas, so now it's Christmas in July and it's time to get a head start on those Christmas projects and play in the challenge at the same time. What could be better?

I love little Christmas houses so I decided to create this little cottage using Graphic 45's St Nicholas collection from 2016. This is such a fun little piece and will look great nestled in with some greenery on the mantel. Another idea for this piece would be to thread a loop through the roof so that you could attach a hook to it and make it an ornament. The house is small enough that it would be adorable hanging from a tree branch.

You need two dies to make this cottage, both are Sizzix Bigz dies, at the bottom I've listed all my supplies. One of the dies builds the basic cottage and the other die provides all the fun trim pieces, roof shingles etc. The basic cottage works with several other dies for building other structures. Check out the Funkie Junkie Boutique as the Boutique carries many Sizzix dies including the ones for this structure.

To make the snow effect, I used a very white modeling paste and just smeared it on with a trowel. Then I went back over that and added some Aleene's Glitter Snow. I didn't have a lot of Glitter Snow so that's why I used the modeling paste underneath. Just add a few fussy cut pieces and of course, I needed some flowers, that's it. All ready. One Christmas project down and ohhhh....who knows how many to go!

Supplies Used:

Graphic 45 - St. Nicholas 12 X 12 Patterns & Solids Pad 4501411
Graphic 45 - St Nicholas 12 x 12:
Bells and Bows
Sweet Tooth
Candy Cane Wishes
Red Cardstock (for the two large candy canes)
Sharpie - White (to make the stripes on the large candy canes)
Sizzix Bigz Die - Village Gingerbread by Tim Holtz
Sizzix Bigz XL Die - Village Dwelling by Tim Holtz 660992
Aleene's Glitter Snow
White modeling paste
Petaloo Botanica Sugared Minis - burgundy

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To check out the details of Maggi's adorable little house, click here to be taken to her blog post and then come on back and join us for the Christmas in July challenge, which runs until 11:55 pm EST on August 1st.