The Wild Woods

This is my entry for the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown October theme challenge.

The theme is the wild woods, inspired by John Rutter's Wild Wood Carol.

I struggled a bit with what to do for the challenge - I had a lovely picture in my head for a moody woodland frame with shy deer in the centre, but didn't have the stamps and so on to make it! 

So last night I came up with this as a bit of a last minute entry. It has the benefit of being quite simple to make, so I could repeat it for more cards, and there are numerous possibilities for variations on a theme. I'd like to do a lilac and silver sparkly version.

I used the collage Christmas tree stamp by ClarityStamp and a wooden block fir branch stamp I bought in a charity shop. I measured these and cut card to size, then worked out what size the middle piece needed to be.

I used antique linen distress ink to age each piece, then stamped the tree in burgundy, with snowflakes in the background in antique linen. The branches were stamped in bundled sage distress ink, then I added a small snowflake as a bauble in gold embossing powder.

The holly sprig was stamped in vintage photo distress ink, then I painted it with burgundy and bundled sage inks.

I edged the separate pieces of card with maroon, green and brown sharpie pens, then mounted them onto gold card.

The next step was to choose a colour to matt on to - festive green or warm brown?

I went for brown, then aged a larger piece of white card with antique linen for another layer. To get my layers even I used a perfect layers ruler, the 1/4 inch side.

So that's the finished card, a collage tree theme in traditional festive colours.