Wintery Forest Scene

Hi Everyone,

No holiday season is complete for me unless I create at least one wintery scene. There is just something about the serene beauty of wildlife and the stillness of snow. It gets me every time!

This card begins with a piece of Bristol paper, distress inks and a birch tree stencil from the Tim Holtz Mini Layering Kit #21. As you probably know sometimes applying distress inks can be challenging. The ink often grabs, making it very hard to smooth the ink out. But, if you use Bristol paper (I found the heavy Bristol works best), the ink just glides onto the paper- whew! what a relief!

So without delay, I lightly taped down the stencil to hold it in place and started at the bottom with the distress inks and a blending tool.  As I worked my way up the panel, I applied Gathered Twigs, then Weathered Wood, Tumbled Glass and Antique Linen for the sun. If you have used Tim Holtz’s mini stencils before,  then you know that the stencil is not quite wide enough for the full width of the paper. Fortunately, this design is very forgiving so I colored one side from top to bottom and then repositioned the stencil and completed the other side.

With the background nearly complete, I started working on creating the other elements. I cut two deer from the Penny Black Natures Beauty, two birds from the Impression Obsession Small Bird die set and a set of birch trees from the My Favorite Things Die-namics Birch Trees. I used heavy Bristol paper for all of these. I also hand cut a snowy snow bank from bristol paper.

Next, I added little touches of gathered twigs and weathered wood distress inks to the birch trees and snow bank. Then, rubbed a little Versamark ink along the edge of the snow bank, sprinkled clear sparkle embossing powder and heat set it. This gave a little sparkle. The snow and birch trees were then added to the background.

To finish all the parts of this card, I colored the deer with Vintage photo and Walnut stain distress ink and the birds with Tumbled Glass, Faded Jeans and a touch of Gathered Twigs.

The sentiment  “Merry Christmas” was hand-lettered in pencil for a subtle look. Then the background was lightly splattered white Mc Caffery’s ink.

Now, the birch tree background was ready to be positioned onto a Sugar Wafer gray card stock card base.

To complete the card, a narrow white cardstock frame was added with strips of foam tape.

And, there you have it – a wintery forest scene.

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