More snow

It's a sketch challenge at the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown this week.

I wanted to use a scene stamp from Hobby Art - it was too narrow for the border last week, but will fit nicely into an oval.

I stamped onto Clarity card with black permanent ink (the archival ink has been ordered, I'm still using the stazon, but for line art it works fine).

Then to make it look wintery, I drew in snowy areas with a versa mark pen, and heat embossed in white.

It looked snowy, but the line art was obscured somewhat. We'll address that later.

I coloured in using distress inks, I pressed the pads onto a blending mat then picked them up with a paint brush. I used brushed corduroy, walnut stain and black soot for the houses, church and fence, then blends of pine needles, mowed lawn, bundled sage and iced spruce for the greenery, getting more blue as I moved from the foreground to background to suggest some depth.

The sky is iced spruce and chipped sapphire - I liked this blend so much last week, I went for it again. I used a make up sponge this time, and a small make up applicator to get in around the horizon.

To tidy up the line art (some of the houses had disappeared completely) I used a fine nib permanent pen. I used the stamp as a reference to draw back in the lines I'd lost in the embossing.

Finally for the image, I added snow in the sky with a white pen. I'd thought about doing stars, but think that'll wait until I have a new watermark ink pad - mine's dried up.

For the oval surround, I use Clarity stencil card. I cut the oval out using my fiskars cutting board, then embossed a dotty pattern with a Tattered Lace embossing folder. I curved the corners with a punch.

The bottom layer is a sparkly navy card, cut out with a spellbinders die.

I made the banner with stencil card again, painted with green distress inks to tie in with the main image.

I positioned it slightly differently to the sketch, it extends out from the navy layer over the card base. It just looked better, and there was more space for it, I hope no-one minds!!

The whole thing goes onto a 5x7 card base, which I cut down slightly to fit better.

The photos are a bit yellow, but not going to redo them as have to get ready - having a rare night out with my Mummy friends, without the babies!