Winter Trees and Flowers

It's time for the final challenge of 2017 at Stamping Sensations, and our theme for December is

* * * * * WINTER TREES AND FLOWERS * * * * *

Last month's theme of one layer cards seemed to be a little too challenging for some of you, but this month we hope you will find it easier, and you can layer and embellish as much as you like!

However, please do remember that we are a stamping challenge, therefore we must see stamping as the focal point of your artwork - ie. stamping must be the central point of attention and interest.

We have a fab prize from Stix2 for our winner, with a smaller prize for second place.



I chose a winter trees stamp from Circa Design (Unmounted Stamp Company) for my main image.

The pheasants, fox and kestrel are by Hobby Art, and the sentiment is a freebie from Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine.

I used a punched circle to mask where I wanted the sun to be, and also masked the top and bottom of the card, and everywhere below the line of the hill before colouring the sky with Memento ink using ink dusters. I then reverse masked the sun and coloured that too. I removed the hill and sun masks, stamped the tree scene and added some shading to give the effect of snow. I had to extend the trunk of the tree covering the right hand side of the sun, with a fine black pen, otherwise it would have appeared suspended in mid air!  Finally I removed all other masks and stamped the fox, kestrel and sentiment. The pheasants were stamped on a separate piece of card, coloured with Zig Clean Color pens, cut out (minus a few extra lines which I didn't want to show in the picture) and glued in place.

As always, if you're not quite sure how to interpret the theme, or just need some ideas, pop over to the Challenge Blog, where my teamies have created some wonderful samples to inspire you.

The run up to Christmas is always busy (and I still have several more cards to make!) but I do hope you will be able to find time to join in the challenge. It needn't take long, or be complicated, and the closing date is not until until the 3rd of January. A bit of quiet card making time between Christmas and New Year will be the perfect antidote to all the stress of the big day!