Paper Canteen Creations: The Octopode Factory

We'd like to invite YOU to join in this year and participate in our 12 Days of Christmas Smeared and Smudged style event. We're offering up a cool prize at the end, and know that you'll have a blast! How can you do this, you ask? Well, there are a couple of ways to participate this year, and below you find all the details.

12 Days Of Christmas Jolly Blogger
Commit to making and displaying one stamped project on your blog for 12 Days in December. To commit, add your name and blog address in a comment under this post by November 27
The Rules The project must be handmade by you and be posted by 9:00 am Pacific Time every day. The project must be stamped, with either a rubber stamp or digi stamp used somewhere, and must be either Christmas or Winter Holiday themed. The project cannot be ALL digital, such as a digi scrapbook page, but can use digital elements in the overall project. To qualify for the prize drawing at the end of the month, you must post a project EVERY SCHEDULED DAY in December. If you miss a day, you will still qualify to receive a survival button, but will not qualify for the prize drawing.

Posting Schedule

Wednesday December 1st
Friday December 3rd (Smeared Ink Day)
Sunday December 5th
Tuesday December 7th (Smeared Ink Day)
Thursday December 9th
Saturday December 11th
Monday December 13th
Wednesday December 15th
Friday December 17th (Smeared InkDay)
Sunday December 19th
Tuesday December 21st
Thursday December 23rd (Smeared Ink Day)

Now I bet you are wondering what Smeared Ink Day is! They are the days that we are challenging you to use only Smeared Ink Stamps on your projects! This is not mandatory, but there may just be an extra entry for the prize drawings with your name on it for using only Smeared Ink stamps on those days!!!

12 Days of Christmas Merry Hopper

What You Have To Do:Hop through each of the 12 Days Blogs that are participating and leave a comment on each project.

The Rules:You must leave a comment on EACH participating blog every day to qualify for the prize drawing. Your comment should be about the project or something related (ie-no "Here's my comment for today" or "I'm here!"...these types of comments won't count!) If you miss a day or a blog, you will still qualify to receive a survival button, but will not qualify for the prize drawing.

Prize Drawing At the end of the 12 days, we will be drawing for a fabulous free stamp set from Smeared Ink, along with some other goodies!

When you sign up to be a 12 Days Jolly Blogger, you will receive a special blog button to display in your sidebar during the 12 Days. It will have a name list of all the other participants, so you'll have a one-stop hub for all your visitors!

Each person who successfully completes the 12 Days as either a Jolly Blogger or a Merry Hopper will receive one entry toward the prize drawing. If you successfully complete both, you will receive two entries. (Meaning if you are a Jolly Blogger and you comment on every blog every day, you have successfully completed both)

Now that you all know why you are here!! =)

Hello Everyone!! Day Three of our fabulous 12 days of Christmas hop here at Smeared Ink!!

Today is not an exclusive Smeared Ink so I decided to use an image from a brand new find The Octopede Factory. I instantly fell in LOVE with the Marie Antoinette image.

So for today's creation I altered a wooden board with acrylic paint, my image and many fabric flowers!!!

I started by sanding and painting my board. I let that set aside to dry for about an hour. It took me about this long to color and trim out my image. Once my board was about....3/4 of the way dry, I grabbed my finest gold glitter, sprinkled it all over the board and just moved it around with my hands pushing it gently in to the grooves and bumps created by my haphazard sanding.

Once that was done and my board was dry, I adhered my image to my board.

I then grabbed a bunch of ribbons, all in pink shades and used the stitching technique demonstrated here by my friend Joanne, to create the what I call "caterpillar flowers".

The other flowers were cut from fabric that I picked up recently using this technique, also from my friend.

I used my hot glue gun to adhere them to the board. My last touch was to add a hanger to it. Since the entire piece was glittery, so pink and fancy, I wanted something to tone it down just a bit. So I used an old red tshirt. I cut off a strip and staple gunned it to the back.