Adventures of a Table Decoration (this is long)

Grab some coffee/cocoa, get comfy. :) This began as what I thought was a cute idea, but... I started out with the sleigh template, reduced the size so it would be more fitting to these gorgeous Flourishes reindeer. I stamped eight reindeer and embossed with gold EP, colored them with Prismacolors/baby oil. Then I started cutting them out with my craft knife. Took a break after cutting out two, cut out the sleigh (scissors). I inked the runners with silver Colorbox ink. Attacked the sides and base of the sleigh with Versamark, then sprinkled copper, a bit of irridescent, and then gold EP, shaking off between each sprinkling, hit them with the heat gun. The raised flourish is a Tim Holtz Grungegoard Element that I cut in half so each side would have it, embossed with a couple layers of gold EP, stuck them on the sleigh after it was put together. Cut out two more reindeer, then decided to see how they looked with the sleigh. Argh...the reindeer were too small. When I sized the sleigh to the reindeer I held the main part of the sleigh up to the stamp - DUH, not taking into consideration the runners. Double DUH! So out of frustration this got put to the side for, oh, about three weeks, covered with lots of other stuff. After an archeological dig (you haven't seen my desk) looking for something else, the reindeer were excavated. After all the work so far, I told myself "The Night Before Christmas" does say eight tiny reindeer ~grin~. At this point I didn't feel like cutting out the other four, so I attached the gold cord "reigns" and a tiny little jingle bell to each deer - they actually jingle, sounds so cute! My son asked how I got them to stand. Well, by sticking them to my fingers of course! Initially tried attaching one to a manila folder base and I got stuck to its hoof, I don't know how. Pulled myself off, and it flopped over like road kill. Here's where the recycled acetate packaging comes in handy. Cut some tabs, folded them up, and attached the hooves minus my fingers to the tabs. Wheeee, it worked! Used some red Stickles to attach the sprigs to the harnesses. Mounted the whole thing to cardboard base, glued down artificial snow. This sleigh is hauling some Hershey's Hugs! :) I will have this on my dining room table, at least until Christmas dinner. It has the raw edge on the cardboard showing here, but I will be putting it on some very fine sparkly white tulle and that will cover the base and provide more "snow".

Stamps: Flourished Christmas.

Paper: The Paper Studio, manila folder, cardboard.

Ink: Colorbox Queues, Versamark.

Accessories: Gold cord, tiny jingle bells, Stickles, MS branch punch, acetate, Tim Holtz Grungeboard, EP powder, snow, vacuum, threatening the cat when she jumps on the table to check it out.