Stunning home decor from Ingrid...

Hi everyone!

It's going to be a busy weekend with so little shopping time until Christmas but we have to get our crafting time in too, right?  To get you motivated we're having a guest post today from a very talented lady whom many of you will know already, Ingrid Kristina.  Ingrid was a Top 3 winner in our October challenge and she is here today to share this gorgeous make with you...

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Hi there, my name is Ingrid Kristina V, aka Inka (short for Ingrid). I’m in my early 30’s and live in London with my Fiancé and our two little girls. I have always been a crafty soul and enjoy cardmaking, art journaling, creating fine or mixed media art and more, which I share regularly on my blog Ingrid's Crafts Corner.

My cardmaking style is clean, simple and contemporary, with bold and bright features, as well as artsy, grungy and fun.

My art could be described as grungy, textured, vintage, but I also like to play with colours and visual textures. I have an enormous passion for mixed media and love the creative freedom it gives me. I’m consistently on a lookout for new trends and right now my favourite toy are Brusho crystals so hop over to my blog to see what ‘mess’ I created so far. J I also love to experiment and often develop new techniques that I share with excitement with my blog buddies.

I am very honoured and excited to be here as a Guest Designer today! Thank you for inviting me!

I am currently very much in love with vintage Christmas designs so when I was invited to guest design and found out about the theme for the December challenge, ‘Nostalgic Christmas’, I squeaked a little with excitement! I love everything about Christmas. It’s magical, it goes tightly hand in hand with family traditions. This is the precious time when the family gets together and enjoys freely the frivolities of life whilst not forgetting why we celebrate. I’ve been actively crafting and blogging for about a year now and I am very much enjoying creating for Christmas! Anything from cardmaking to wintery tags, alterations and home décor is now on my books! I have so many ideas running through my head right now I just hope I will have the time to do it all! I plan to alter all of our Christmas tree decorations so that’s something to look forward to!

I created a mixed media vintage wall hanging for this challenge and I’m keeping my inky fingers crossed that you’ll like it. The overall idea was to create not only something special because it is for the Country View Challenges blog, but also something that looked like it was once hung somewhere and left there for many, many years! I hope I have captured this. The canvas was made grungy but glitzy, the vintage image of Santa crackled and the metals rusted…. There was a LOT of distressing, colorizing and creating from scratch to give the illusion of ‘old’, or in another fancy word ‘vintage’ J. I absolutely adore the image on this piece… what’s more nostalgic than knowing that the story about ‘Santa’ has been one of the most beautiful lies we’ve been telling our children for centuries! It’s a beautiful tradition that brings the mystery and excitement into our young lives! I cherish this memory of my childhood and hope my children will one day too! I will certainly do my best to create the magic for them every year just like my parents did it for me and my younger brother!

 

I hope you will find a moment to hop over to my blog here where I will share more photos, how I created this Christmas wall hanging and will also include three mini tutorials/tips on how to make these pine branches from scratch, how to create subtle sparkle in your grungy and distressed background and how to customise your clear embossing powder with any colour just like I did with the seal on my letter for Santa here. Everything that you see on this wall hanging is handcrafted and my own design (apart from the little die cut branch and the printed images) so if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Thank you very much to the oh-so talented Design Team at the Country View Challenges for selecting my creation and therefore an opportunity to show you all what I love and am passionate about. I feel very honoured! Thank you!

Talking about Christmas, I hope you will all have a wonderful time this December and enjoy the special holiday time to the full! Blessings!

Ingrid xxx

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Wow, this is stunning Ingrid, such a beautifully festive piece, thank you!

Whatever nostalgic memories you have of this festive time, we'd like to see them so grab your card, papers, embellishments and glue and let us see what you can make.  The winner will be chosen at random so everyone has a chance of winning!

Brenda will be here on Sunday with her second make for the month so we hope to see you here.

Have a great weekend!

Chris and the team xxx