Sketchy trees

I got completely derailed this week! It was the first full week of hubby and daughter back at school after Easter, so I thought I had loads of time - then it disappeared. So my plans for this week's 52 Christmas Card Throwdown card changed when I got to Friday afternoon and hadn't started! I was going to do a Groovi card; that'll have to wait.

I did get two cards made, but we had a play date that I'd forgotten about (oops!) so I didn't quite get the blog posted for the challenge launch.

So the good news is that this is definitely a quick card to make, although I don't think it looks like a quick and simple - and it's always useful to have those up your sleeve!

Rosi is hosting the challenge for May, and she has chosen this sketch for us:

I started with an A5 sheet of Sheena's stamping card. I sponged distress oxides over to make a vague sort of night time landcape/skyscape.

I flicked water over this, then blotted, to give a speckled or starry effect.

This worked much better than I expected - I think it's the card, which is not what I usually use. So now I know!

I cut this down before stamping trees, using black archival. I went through my stamp folders to find a suitable stamp, and found this one. It was one of the first I bought from Clarity years ago, and had forgotten about, but it's really beautiful.

I then cut masks for the tree from copy paper, and stamped again using watering can archival, to suggest distance. Where I missed parts of the stamping, I filled in with a light grey drawing pen, and blotted.

I cut this background down to make three panels.

For the toppers, I used sizzix tree dies, in two sizes. After cutting in black, I wanted a greater contrast in size so cut the smaller one down a bit. I also thought they looked a bit plain, so over stamped using the same tree stamp as the background. I used hickory smoke distress oxide, so it'd show on the black, but third generation so it wasn't too strong.

The card went together on a 5x7 card blank.

I love the atmospheric background this has created, and so easy to do! I might bash out some more and use reindeer die cuts, or Santa and his sleigh in the sky.

Just to prove this was a quick card, I made another yesterday afternoon as well, with a music theme.




It occurs to me that as neither have a sentiment they are not identifiably Christmas cards, but I think they have a Christmas feel.

To join in with the challenge, head to the 52CCT blog, it runs until Friday 10th May.