A Snowy Christmas Scene using the Under The Trees Stamp

Hello to everyone,

This is Shauna back with you today to share a peaceful and beautiful stamp by Penny Black called Under The Trees. I just love this scene with the charming squirrel and bird exchanging gifts under snowy trees.

This is a one stamp card so…. I started out with stamping the stamp with Versafine Onyx Black ink onto watercolor paper. I used a stamp positioning tool (a MISTI or Tim Holtz stamp platform works great) to stamp this so that I could stamp multiple times if I need to get a clean, dark stamping. Once that was done, I stamped it again with Versamark clear ink and then sprinkled clear embossing powder and heat set it. This was done so that the image would remain crisp while I watercolored it.

You can use any watercolors you may have available. I used the Peerless watercolor to color the whole scene, first starting with the blues in the sky and lightly adding blue to the edges of the snow. Next, I colored the fence and squirrel with browns and finally added red and blue to the bird and present. Little bits of yellow were added around the hanging stars to make them glow and sparkle.

Once all the water coloring was done and completely dry, I added white McCaffery’s white ink on the top of the rails and posts of the fence to give a snowy appearance. Then, with a white gel pen, I outlined a few of the edges of the branches and added dots of white in the sky so it looked like it was lightly snowing.

To frame the scene, I cut a border using the largest die of the Penny Black Antique Frames die set and watercolor paper. The edges of the frame were lightly touched with Zig Kuretake gold ink and the Merry Christmas was hand-lettered with an oblique pen holder and the Steno Nib – but, of course, you can stamp and gold heat emboss your own sentiment if you don’t want to hand-letter.

To finish, I mounted the snowy scene onto a Blueberry Sour blue card base and then applied foam tape to the back of the frame and mounted it over the scene to finish the edges. Finally, for a bit of sparkle, I added gold ink to the hanging stars to add the final touch!