Winter Bird Card

Hello Crafty Friends,

Here we are on the eve of Thanksgiving.  So much to be grateful for… especially you, our friends in the Crafting World!  You guys are awesome! Thank you for all your lovely comments and support – we couldn’t do it without you!

This card features a Winter Bird serenely perched on a birch tree.  I just love the effects of watercolor – so soft and lovely.  I don’t live where it snows, so a wintery scene allows me to pretend!

There are only a few simple elements to this card – the watercolored background, the snowy banks of snow and birch trees with a sitting bird.

The background was painted using my favorite Peerless watercolors (but any you have will do) on a piece of watercolor paper that had been prepared earlier by flicking masking fluid on it and allowing it to dry.  This is what created the look of snow falling.  I love rubbing off the masking fluid after the watercolor has dried.  It’s like magic – you have a beautiful reveal of snow!

While the panel was drying, I cut the ‘snowy banks’ from watercolor paper and painted the edges of the hills with a similar color of the sky.  Later, you will see that when I positioned the trees, I added more of shading around the bottom of the trees.

For more inspiration on how to paint snow banks, trees and a wintery scene, there is no one better than Heather Telford!  You can check out her beautiful work on her blog, Bits & Pieces.

The trees were cut from a textured, linen finish scrap of card stock using the My Favorite Things Birch Tree die set and painted here and there to be made to look like birch trees.  I could get away with using this paper since the trees required very little water and paint!

Now, there is the little winter bird.  He is from the Winter Moments stamp set by Penny Black.  He was stamped onto watercolor paper and painted.  It was here that I decided the trees needed some dimensional snow on the branches.  Using a Snow Marker, I added the ‘snow’ with the marker and heat set it so it would puff up.

With all the painted done (or so I thought – you will see what I mean in a minute), it was onto the assembly.  The snowy banks were adhered to the background panel and then the trees were added.  I used foam tape on two of them so there was some dimension. Then the little birdie was placed his branch for a perch.

It was here where I thought the sky was a little blank so I added the moon.  Cut with a circle die out of watercolor paper, it was lightly painted and adhered to the background.  I wished I had thought of it earlier and I would have used some mask paper, applied a ‘moon’ mask, then watercolored.  By alas, hindsight is 20/20 – oh well, this worked out.

To finish the card, a navy blue panel was adhered to a white card base and the watercolor panel with the winter scene complete was added on top.

I thought I was going to have the sentiment on vellum and attached but in the end I decided I liked the simple word, Joy lettered directly on the watercolor paper.  I am showing both versions so you can decide what you like best.

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