New Paper Flowers For My Sponge Painted Christmas Vase

This past summer I had a delightful time "playing" with wood, glass, and paper-clay crafts.   The two classes that I took at Artful Gathering this summer really put me in a creative crafts hyper drive.

Some of the things I was doing was experimenting with collage and painting or doing both to many of the glass vases or bottles I have accumulated over the years or from my crafts supplies stash. So I embarked on creating the vases and then deciding what paper flowers I wanted to create for them.

One of the glass vases I wanted to embellish was the one shown in the picture above. In looking at it I thought it would look pretty just the way it was with an embellished paper poinsettia in it.   I wasn't sure how to fashion the little stamens and filament in the middle of the poinsettia as I needed to support my large poinsettia petals somehow so I decided to just add bronze beads to the large round center I had fashioned out of paper-clay.  It worked well and and looked somewhat like a poinsettia so I was happy with it at the time.  However, in looking at it over the last two months I decided I wasn't happy with it - either the vase or the paper poinsettia flowers.

I really wanted to collage the vase but couldn't figure out a way to do so with its' shape and bubbles so I decided to just sponge paint it in Christmas colors.  I painted it with black acrylic paint first then I added a sponge painted combination of Christmas metallic green paint, metallic red paint, metallic grey-blue paint, and white acrylic paint.  I sealed the paints with a glazing medium.

I decided that six large poinsettia stems painted in a bright Christmas red would be pretty so I made the paper blossoms and painted them with a combination of acrylic red, metallic red paint, and clear glitter paint.

In looking at my original stem over time I decided I didn't really like bronze beads and decided to use a gold puffy paint to create the effect of the little stamens and filament this time.  So I inserted my paper blossoms into the paper clay center I had fashioned to hold them.

When the paper clay was dry I painted it with a metallic Christmas green and then added the gold puffy paint.  The puffy paint worked really well so I was pleased with that.

Once everything was dry I added my six poinsettia stems to my sponge painted vase and bent them into the shape that I wanted.

Then I cut three pieces of a red Christmas type rope that I had, wrapped it around the top of the bottle and tied it in a bow.

I wanted to put this new arrangement in between my mixed media Santa and Mrs. Claus art dolls that I had made this summer, which are shown in the picture above, and place all three on my kitchen table.

All three are tall and skinny and will be perfect for my table which has a long but narrow rectangular shape.

I can hardly wait for the Christmas season to begin so I can put all three of these out.   It's a little too early to put my Christmas decorations out now but I promise I will take pictures when I do and post them for you all to see.