Joyful Holiay for Freshly Made Sketches

Hi Everyone... .Second post for today!

I did get to spend some time in my craft room and I couldn't wait to play along with this fabulous sketch from Freshly Made and it allowed me to use on of my favorite Penny Black Sets - Joyful Holiday

As soon as I saw this sketch, I had this idea in my head of combining my very old Taylored Expressions woodland die with this fabulous deer.  Of course, the postbox in this set caught my attention.  It so reminds me of England.

I began by die-cutting the woodland die and I used it as a stencil on the card base - that gave me my vertical edge layer.  I then stamped and colored the deer with Luminance Pencils.  I then blended the blue background behind the stencil and around the deer. The great thing about coloring with the pencils, is that they act almost as a resist technique for the ink.  The ink just doesn't get a grip on the penciled areas.

I then stamped and colored the postbox and fussy cut around it.  I made two "snowdrifts" and placed the postbox between the two layers.

The part that gave me the most heartburn was the trees.  Yeah, the diecut acted as a great stencil, but the white lines, although obviously birch trees, had no dimension and looked really flat.  Especially with the detail on the deer and the postbox.  So, out came the pencils, again!  I can't tell you how long it took for me to add dimension and texture to the outline!  But it was really worth it.   I tapered off the closer I got to the deer.  Here's a closeup of the detail on the trees:

Adding the detail really helped and I accomplished that with a mixture of soft warm greys and cool greys layered over each other multiple times.

Here's my full card:

I'm sorry about the photographs.... but it is a very dull day here today and I only managed to get a photo at around 3.45!  Not exactly great light in winter at 3.45....

I'll be back tomorrow with another card.  In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight.

Hugs

Jaydee

Card recipe:

• Stamps:  Penny Black - Joyful Holidays.  Sentiment:  Altenew - Holiday Wishes
• Inks:  Stazon
• Pencils:  Luminance
• DIe:  Woodland - Taylored Expressions

Comments

[Judy Rozema]

What a sweet holiday card! I love it! So glad you linked up at Freshly Made Sketches!

[Karren Johnson]

Beautiful card using gorgeous images! Thanks so much for joining us at Freshly Made Sketches.

[Jeanne H]

A wonderful card! Truly wonderful. Warm hugs back to you.