We're back from our summer break over at Crafty Catz and our latest challenge has started. Our theme for this week is "Getting Ready for Christmas." You can create anything Christmas related.
I chose this fun clip art image, printed it in gray scale, and then used water colors, white pencil, and white gel pen to color the image. I started with dark blue water color paint, and did the entire night sky, after masking the moon and polar bears. I used a light gray on the ground, adding highlights to the gray scale. I used a darker gray water color to emphasize the leaf branches at the very bottom. I let that dry completely, overnight, and under a heavy book.
I found my polychromos pencils and added highlights to the polar bears, the trees, and the moon. I added yellow and aqua pencil rings around the moon, getting lighter and less distinct the further away from the moon. I blended those rings with gamsol. Finally, I grabbed a white gel pen and added bright highlights to the treetops, plus a few strokes on the bears, and to create the snowflakes/stars. I added a bit of sparkle gel pen to the tree tops and snow but it doesn't show very well in the photo.
The sentiment was printed using my Word program, setting the text in yellow and the background in deep blue. Once printed, I cut it with a die from Avery Elle. I wanted a completely CAS card so I added no embellishment of any kind. I understand that if you are a purist who demands lots of 'white' space for CAS, you'll be disappointed in this card. But I wanted the scene to be the main feature and that meant lots of night sky instead of lots of white space. :-D
