Yuletide Greetings

The September referral program for Artistic Outpost is ANYTHING GOES, that's right you can choose your own theme using any of the fabulous Artistic Outpost images and you can enter as many times as you like.

I decided to use the recently released MIDWINTER plate to create my Christmas Card.

I began by creating my textural snowflake background which I thought would be easier to follow with step by step pictures.

These are the products I used to create the background, a piece of thick card or mountboard, palette knife, Gesso and Dylusions stencil.

Apply the Gesso through the stencil using the palette knife. I quite like texture so I did not smooth out the Gesso too much

Hopefully you can see the fabulous dimension and texture the Gesso gives when applied through the snowflakes and SNOW text. I left this to dry for a few hours before applying any colour.

The next step is to apply acrylic paint over the snowflakes, I used Claudine Hellmuth's sky blue paint, pouncing the paint onto the card to ensure all the crevices were covered with colour.

The next step really makes the snowflakes pop. Simply add a little white acrylic paint over the top, the key here is to not use too much paint.

I stamped the image from the MIDWINTER plate onto white card using black archival ink, blending broken china ink around the edges and added a little snow for texture.  Yuletide Greetings was stamped to the top corner, again using black archival ink.  For further interest I also added two wooden snowflakes coloured with silver paint dabber.

Snow was again painted in the same way as my background, adding silver paint dabber to the edges.  For further dimension I also added a wooden reindeer painted with silver paint dabber.

I could not forget the inside of the card and so added the wonderful reindeer from the MIDWINTER plate, adding a little broken china ink at the base of the reindeer to ground him, so that he does not appear to be floating. I love adding an image to the inside bottom corner, I feel it adds to that professional finish.

Please link your creations HERE for your chance to win a fabulous prize.

Thanks so much for stopping by. Tracy x x