Green and brown reindeer

A second, very different, card for our colour challenge at the Christmas Card Throwdown.

I bought this set of stamps in one of my bargain bundles a couple of months ago. It's not my usual style, but I thought the images were very pretty, so worth getting at sale price.

I started by stamping the reindeer in vintage photo distress oxide and using a water brush to draw to the colour. But it quickly got messy, so I stamped again, in potting soil archival ink this time.

I then coloured using the distress oxides and a water brush. Vintage photo and frayed burlap for the browns, and twisted citron, cracked pistachio and iced spruce for the greens, with salty ocean, stormy sky and black soot mixed in to create different shades.

To frame it, and bring the kraft card in, I cut an aperture with a die from a nested set from The Works. To add interest, I ran it through an embossing folder from spellbinders, then brushed vintage photo distress ink over to catch on the raised areas. I also edged the aperture and outside with the ink pad.

I used a little black soot to add shadow under the hooves to ground the reindeer a little.

I added to a 5x7 card blank.

I'm not a colourer, but I do enjoy playing with colouring images like this. Using the inks and water brush naturally gives variation and makes blending easy, so while it may not be perfect, I find I can get results I'm happy with, without a lot of skill.





To play along with this colour challenge, visit us at the Christmas Card Throwdown, you have until midnight GMT on Friday 1st December.