It's Christmas at Aurora Wings

Our brand new challenge starts today at Aurora Wings with the theme of Christmas.  EEEk!!! so many fabulous AW Christmas digis from which to choose. I finally narrowed it down to something that had to do with the Nutcracker ballet, certainly a beloved Christmas tradition, and then on to the adorable Nutcracker and Chipmunk Ballerina, furthering the fantasy.  So here I am with a gift bag again.  OOps, I did one for the last challenge as well, but that's how it turned out.  What can I say?  All the Dp came from The Ballet stack from Recollections, a pad I've had for at least as few years.

Here's a closeup of Nutcracker and Chipmunk Ballerina taken under my Ott light on my desk before attempting the fussy cutting.  (Trust me, I was sweatin' it!) I've colored with Copics and added some shading and fur detail with Prismacolor pencils.  I really had no plan when I started this project, except that I wanted to use the Ballet papers, so I colored accordingly, but printed much smaller than I usually do (since I had no idea what I was doing.  A card maybe?..NOT!).  This is about 3 1/2 by 4 1/2" so it was not only a bit of a challenge to color with detail, but also to fussy cut.  I'm happy that this photo picked up the sparkle of the gel pens I used in silver and gold.  Not so much of the Stickles on the tutu, but I'm still quite pleased.

Speaking of fussy cutting, the term really refers to cutting details from printed paper or ephemera, I'm sure before digital stamps were even invented. Everything you see here was cut from the pages of The Ballet Stack.  In this case I've cut around a portion of the holly at left to insert the sentiment, which I've also fussy cut from a square tag.

And here's some more fussy cutting for the entire area on which I've place the Nutcracker and Chipmunk Ballerina.  Fortunately this was a 12 x 12" pack so it was easy to fussy cut additional elements, like the two holly sprays on the right and left to balance the design and the strips at the top and bottom of the bag to finish it off.  Wow, not necessarily my usual style but the project came together nicely and I have one less present to wrap.  LOL  Be sure to visit the Aurora Wings Challenge Blog to be inspired by the rest of the Aurora Team's gorgeous projects.

And don't forget to enter our current FB Contest, Nature's Bounty, now through November 30th.

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I'll be adding this to the DL.Art November Linky Challenge, the Outlawz Twisted Thursday Christmas Magic Challenge, C.R.A.F.T Christmas, Crafting by Designs Little Animals 3/3, Simon Says Wednesday Christmas Critters 3/5, 613 Avenue Create November ATG, CHNC Cute or ATG Christmas, Creatalicious ATG /Optional Use a Sentiment, CHNC November Christmas Extra Anything Christmas, and CHN November Patterned Paper Challenge.