Welcome to my crafty blog. I’m still busy making Christmas cards – this one is for a friend who’s not a Christian, so I went for a more general scene and sentiment. It’s sparkly as well, but that doesn’t show up in this picture!

I took the inspiration from a couple of blog challenges this week: Freshly Made Sketches ( https://freshlymadesketches.blogspot.com/) and TGIF Challenges (http://tgifchallenges.blogspot.com/2020/09/tgif283-designer-take-over.html)

I used the Claritystamp ‘treescape’ stencil for this one, and started by blending drops of bottled Distress inks into some shaving foam and mixing them together. I used Chipped Sapphire, Peeled Paint, Peacock Feathers & Tattered Rose.

I taped the stencil onto a piece of card, and then dragged the shaving foam across it. I use a ruler for this, as I find it easier to get the foam spreading evenly over the stencil. The shaving foam basically acts as a carrier for the ink, which is then picked up by the card and left behind when you wipe the foam off with some paper towel. You can get some lovely effects on card from this (and it smells great too!).

I decided to cut the three panels out of the stencil, rather than leave it as one piece of card, and mounted them on a piece of co-ordinating cardstock.

As it’s for a Christmas card, I wanted to make the scene look a bit more frosty, so I used Wink of Stella to highlight the paths and tree branches, which gives it a lovely sparkle

I finished by adding a sentiment, using ‘Barbara’s Christmas Sentiments’, again from Claritystamp. The set didn’t have exactly what I wanted to say, so I partially masked & stamped three of the sentiments to get my phrase.

The weather has definitely turned cooler here in the last few days, but I’m hoping it will be a while yet before I have to cope with frosty mornings!