From Mantelpiece Envy to Faux Mantelpiece

I have mantelpiece envy.  I blame Pinterest for this… so many images, right in my line of vision, of  beautiful seasonally decorated mantels.

We don’t have a fireplace or a mantel – each winter I dig out my Ugg boots and we bring in the portable gas heater (it’s stored in the shed for most of the year) and that’s our source of heat for the season, so definately no log fires or mantel decorating opportunities around here!

We do however have a small window in our meals area by the family room. It looks out over the patio and lets in a little light but otherwise doesn’t have much purpose …….until now!  It does have a window sill, which will hereby be known as the faux mantelpiece and will be decorated for special occasions!

This is how it usually looks:

We’re expecting a reasonably hot Christmas – they’ve forecast about 33°C ( that’s 91°F) so I thought a little Winter Christmas Scene may help cool us down.

So here’s  my  first ever seasonally decorated faux mantelpiece. I’ve used  the 3D Ledge Village designs by Marji Roy (full credits and links at end of post) and cut with my Silhouette Cutting machine.  My faux mantelpiece doesn’t have the benefit of a nice blank wall behind it like a real mantel does, so I attached  a decorated card background to the window as the little village was getting  “lost” against the view of the patio and garden beyond.

and a close up:

I was pretty pleased with the nice sharp cut I got on the Santa Sleigh  motif. The reindeer reins are impossibly thin, probably less than half a millimetre and they cut really well without breaking. I was elated but amazed!

Here’s another Christmas decoration – a little tealight  church, that I popped under a glass dome. I’m loving the fir tree cut outs that are included with the cut files

Credit where credit’s due:

I used 4 of  the Ledge Village designs by Marji Roy– the Studio cutting files are available at the Silhoutte shop here.

Under the glass dome I have used Marji’s Church design from the Tealight Village series.

The Santa Sleigh Design by Echo Park is also from the Silhouette online shop here

The snowflakes are from a Fiskars Paper Punch and the Nativity star was traced in the Silhouette software from an image.

This is my second last post before Christmas, I have a nice quick Christmas  file coming up for Free File Friday, so I’ll see you then!

Cheers

Pam

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