New Year new challenge over at The Craft Barn

Good afternoon folks.
Though things went a little bit haywire technically over at The Craft Barn blog I am excited to tell you that the popular annual challenge has now launched over at The Craft Barn Blog HERE and more details about the whole challenge can be found HERE.

This year is a challenge in 2 parts. The annual part is a calender challenge where each month you will create a part or a page of a calender for 2016. We give you the colour and an object and these have to form part of your entry.
The other part you can dip into or out of as you wish and will be based on the themes we have been using. But check out the links for all the info and prize details.

So, what I thought is that here on my blog I'll give you the details of my offering for the month and hopefully inspire you to play along.
For my calender I decided that I would create an image each month using the Tando Creative Media boards and build them up over the year.
January's colour is Aqua and the object is Snowflakes and this is my offering.

 Each board will be placed on this 12 x 12 board to build up an eclectic patchwork over the year around the actual calender which I can change each year until I get bored LOL.

 I wanted a slightly more quirky feel so the background is shades of aqua and my snowflakes are made up of Embossed Aged Ivory Frantage powder and Stickles (not that it is very clear on the photo)
This is how it all came together.
I covered the board with DecoArt Faux Finishing Medium and laid crumpled tissue down. When it was dry I trimmed it around the edge and stamped Lindsay Mason's Robot in Archival and dried it with a heat gun. (This dries it quickly and minimises the chance of the ink bleeding out and blurring the edges of the image)

I painted the background in shades of Aqua using DecoArt Americana. You can see I painted over some of the stamped details (making it easier for me, because I'm lazy LOL)

When the background had dried I drybrushed some white paint over to bring out the texture of the background.

 Out came the Distress Markers to add some tints of colour to the image.

 I then sprinkled some of the Ivory Frantage powder over and carefully heated with a heat gun to melt it. You have to hold the heat pretty far away to avoid sending it flying, then move closer as it begins to melt. When that had done I diluted some white paint with a bit of water and splattered it randomly across everything. Then, to finish I added blobs of  Stardust Stickles and some White Ranger Enamel accents and left to dry.

 Once everything had dried I used Jet Black Archival ink to colour the edges  and there you go; January is complete.
All products used are available from The Craft Barn.
Hope you all have a good evening and are inspired to take part!