Snowman punch card

A little late for Christmas cards I know. But if I don't post them now they will never be posted.

For some strange reason these snowmen cards didn't photograph too well, and for that I apologize. They are better in reality than in these pictures. I used the new snowman builder punch, blending brushes, Blueberry bushel ink pad and "stamp and write" markers in,  pumpkin pie and choc chip to colour the carrot and branches.  Plus a black marker pen to colour the hat. The trees are a small branch stamp, from Lavinia stamps.

To create the background I used a tiny amount of  Blueberry bushel ink on a blending brush and lightly inked the top section of the card. I punched a circle from the sticky edge of a post it note and used it to mask off  the soon to be moon area.  I kept apply more ink to the sky and around the post it circle to intensify the sky, and create the moon.

With torn paper I created the snowdrifts at the base by brushing ink over the torn edge of the paper onto the card stock. I lightly spritzed the inked card with water and blotted it off after a few seconds, to give a more mottled effect to the sky, almost as if it was snowing.

 I stamped a couple of trees and then punched out the snowman. I coloured his hat, arms and nose, added his eyes and buttons with the markers, then lightly inked the edges to give him some dimension.  I assembled all the parts before adhering him to the front of the card.

Once I had completed the blue scene I just had to try it in a pinky colour. This time I chose to try a pigment ink. So using Versafine Clare, "Monarch",  I repeated the above steps, omitting the water  spritzing as this doesn't work on Versafine Clare inks. Instead of gluing the snowman directly to the panel,  I used very thin foam pads to adhere the snowman to the front of the panel

I brushed some faint snowdrifts and sky onto the base cards before adding the images as I felt the whiteness of the card was a little too stark.