Thursday, December 25, 2014

A Holiday Wish for You






Plus a 'Layered' Tatted Snowflake

I am FINALLY updating my blog, and I want show off a gift I just received from my very talented sister-in-law, who has taken up the 'new' craft of lettering on a 'chalkboard' canvas.    At Thanksgiving, I immediately noticed an attractive, artistic black-and-white 'sign' she had hung on a wall in her dining room. I thought she had purchased it!  I had no idea she was dabbling in this 'new' art form!  And I certainly didn't know she was planning to make one for me! 

It's actually a throwback to the time in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries when fancy lettering and embellishment was the 'norm' on signs or in newspaper advertising as a way to draw customers' attention to a product or announcement.    Although I had been noticing more chalkboards in different shapes and sizes in the craft stores, and was aware that there are special chalk 'paints' to decorate them, I had no idea how popular this art form had become until I recently looked it up on the internet!  

For this sign, she painted a 12" x 12"  white canvas (pre-mounted over a 1" frame) with a special black 'chalkboard effect' paint, and did the beautiful lettering with a white paint pen.   I love it and very much appreciate the talent that went into creating it!  A very special keepsake gift, indeed!   

Layered snowflake
Of course, the canvas is meant to hang on a wall (and is very lightweight), but for the photo I laid it flat as a special background for showing one of my 'newer' snowflakes (tatted about a year ago!), which I 'built up' to a layered effect by adding several embellishments, including a center motif of a metal doodad with tatting around it.  The background snowflake (about 4" across) is done in size 20 pink Cebelia.   

I will explain more about this layered snowflake (which has its own brass ornament stand) and its evolution in my next post (which will be soon!). 

I wanted to get this post in today so that I could 'quickly' update my blog; and I especially wanted to wish you all
 
A very Merry Christmas and a pleasant Holiday Season!