Favourite techniques 2

I promised yesterday to share the card I made with the brusho Christmas tree.

This was the starting point; I'd spritzed water through the Clarity Christmas Tree stencil, then removed it and added brilliant red and dark brown brushos. Once dry, I brushed away the dry powder.

I thought about cutting this out, but decided to work onto the background instead. The stencil comes with the inner section as well as the aperture. So I positioned this over the tree, and stamped the words Merry Christmas (Clarity word chain stamps) across the background with antique linen, fired brick and vintage photo distress oxides.

With the mask in place over the tree again, I spritzed with water to activate the oxides. There was also some brusho powder on the card, which reacted as well to give a blush. So far so good. But the oxides hadn't done much, so I decided to add more water. And of course, the mask was only a superficial barrier, so I wet the brushos in the tree and they bled!

A bit of a mess! But I liked the effect, so didn't want to give up on it.

I placed the tree mask back on (once dried) and used a sponge to add antique linen around the mask to redefine the edges of the tree. I used vintage photo a little at the bottom too. There wasn't a mask for the star, so I cut one from card and did the same.

This improved things somewhat. I used red and brown polychromo pencils within the tree branches to further define them.

As a final step, I used a narrow white gel pen around the tree to give a clear edge.

I then trimmed the card back, and blended vintage photo around the edge. I mounted on a 5x7 card blank.

This is not my most polished card, there is a lot I would do differently next time! But I can't get away from the fact that I really like the techniques and effects both on the tree and the background. So I have a certain fondness for it.




If you would like to experiment yourself with our current colour challenge on the 52 Christmas Card Throwdown, "brown, red and cream", visit us on our blog page. You have until Friday 19th January to enter.