Joy of Christmas Gothic Arch

This week the theme for the Gothic Arches challenge combines two themes, neither of which I find particularly attractive, children and Christmas. Nevertheless, I decided to give it a go. First of all because I had a lovely bit of fabric/paper collage left over which I made for several Alphastamps Xmas projects and it seemed a shame to keep it till next Christmas and also because working with themes I don't much care for is much more of a challenge than always going with what I know and like. I found an child image to go with my collage on the Alphastamps Snug in their beds collage sheet and added the star at the top with an Alphastamps stamp. I finished the card by stitching it onto a watercolour paper background with satin stitch in red thread. I then covered the whole arch with Golden soft gel (gloss) medium and when that was almost but not quite dry I added gold foiling. It's not that easy to see on the scan but this arch literally sparkles!

And guess what, I actually love it!!