Snow had fallen

Hello all and welcome to Words and Pictures... welcome back if you've already seen What's On My Workdesk this Wednesday!  I'm sharing a card today (slightly later than I'd hoped - Ikea trips for candles and Christmas trees, and traffic jams etc.) and it's doing double duty.  

I created this to enter in the MoneySupermarket Christmas Card Craft Off.  There are some amazing prizes on offer, and you've got until 24th December to enter... so why not give it a go?

Regulars will know I don't make cards very often - and I have to say, I found it pretty tricky for some reason - but the solution came thanks to my favourite carol again, and one of my Design Team positions.

I'm delighted to be on the DT for Nicecrane Designs, and today I've used one of the fabulous It Is Christmas Time set, so I hope it will inspire you to pop over there and see what amazing images the lovely Ignacio has to offer...  and in the end, I'm pretty happy with the result.

I LOVED painting the image!  I printed it on Canvas Photo Paper - you can see the initial stage here in this photo - and then used Distress Stains to paint it.

I squished some colour onto the craft mat, next to a spritz of water, and then used a paintbrush to apply it to the canvas.











I'm tickled pink with the subtlety of the effect and the texture you get, and because the canvas drinks up the ink very quickly, it means you've less chance of straying outside the lines!










Because the image has all the shading in place already, and the Distress Stains are translucent, you keep the benefit of all the detail of the drawing even after the tinting process.  And it is such a wonderful image.










When I look at the little boy, I think he's my favourite bit; then I look at the barn and prefer that; then I love the mother and daughter on the little sled, and then that fabulous pair of houses in the background - so many gorgeous details!










I stuck to a limited colour palette, using only the Gathered Twigs, Vintage Photo, Pumice Stone, Frayed Burlap, Weathered Wood and Stormy Sky Distress Stains.  For the skin areas, I put a tiny bit of Antique Linen and some Spun Sugar onto the craft mat using the Distress Markers (don't have those colours in Stains).








It was slightly terrifying tearing it out of the sheet of canvas.  Although it does seem to rip quite happily in straight lines, I was having conniptions that one false move might see me ripping my carefully painted image right down the middle!!











It's backed onto torn corrugated card (insides of a package that arrived) that I inked with Gathered Twigs Distress Stain and then added some Vintage Photo Distress embossing powder to.  Finally, I gave it a frosty dusting using the Versamagic Chalk Ink dewdrop in Cloud White.









The background uses the Artistic Outpost snowflakes from the Sleigh Ride and Snowy Woods sets.  They're embossed in clear embossing ink and powder onto the white card (a piece of A4 folded in half incidentally).

I then used a blending tool to apply Weathered Wood and Pumice Stone DIs and, at the very edges, added some Gathered Twigs to which I also applied some clear embossing powder to give some depth and gloss to the framing effect.






The gorgeous wooden flourishes are from Crafty Emblies - the first thing I've had from them... they're so delightfully delicate and, for this project, I decided to use them in the natural wood finish they came in.

I had some ivy leaves left over from my Holly and Ivy tag.  If you'd like to know how I made them, hop there for a quick look - I won't bore you with it all over again here!  

I used some Gathered Twigs DI to darken them a little further from their golden Vintage Photo hue, so that they would tone in with the slightly bleaker colour palette of this piece.

The lyrics from my favourite carol (you can listen to my favourite version here) are from an Artistic Outpost stamp again, and edged with some more Gathered Twigs.

There are lots of lovely images in this It is Christmas Time set... I enjoyed painting on the canvas so much that I'm planning to do the same with all the others.  If you'd like to look at this, or any of Ignacio's other images, just click here.  So many tempting treats...

So that's my Christmas card for today, only my second in total.  I don't know how all of you do it, the whole making-all-your-own-cards game - I'm full of admiration...  

Thank you so much for stopping by.  And do check out the MoneySupermarket Christmas Card Craft Off - mini-iPads and HobbyCraft vouchers to be won!!

I'm entering this in the following:
MoneySupermarket's Christmas Card Craft Off
The Stampman's challenge this month is In the Bleak Midwinter
The Happy Daze December challenge which is In the Deep Midwinter
Top Tip Tuesday are playing Anything Christmas
Simon Says Stamp's challenge this week is Merry Christmas - for anything Christmassy
At Craft A Scene they are looking for a Winter Scene

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl.  But it warmed more than your body.  It warmed your heart... filled it, too, with melody that would last forever.
Bess Streeter Aldrich