Christmas robins

Well, it’s Ash Wednesday signalling the start of Lent (40 days to Easter…!) and Valentine’s Day, so obviously I’ve made a Christmas card!! 🤣 I am trying now to stick to my ambition of making one Christams card each week and this makes two Wednesdays in a row… I’ve gone with the cute robins from ‘Linda’s Winter Wishes’ from ClarityCrafts, teamed up with their ‘treescape’ stencil (one of my all-time favourites!) I took the colours from this week’s Color Throwdown challenge, picking up the layout from Hand Stamped Sentiments, the stencil theme from Christmas Craft Creations and the kraft card requirement at Sparkles Christmas.

The first step was to stamp the trio of robins onto a piece of kraft card, then cover them with masks that I’d cut from Clarity’s mask material. I lined up the ‘treescape’ stencil over the card and masked that with low tack tape so I just had the left-hand panel sitting behind the robins (the effect of the trees picks up HSS’s sketch background). I sponged ‘picket fence’ Distress Ink through the stencil, using it quite heavily – the Distress Oxide would have given slightly better coverage but I’ve only got it in the ink (one for the next shopping list!)

Next was to colour the robins with Pergaliner pencils. They looked quite grainy on the kraft card, so I blended the pigment out with a little Dorso oil and a blending nib (you need to have used the B oil-based pencils for this, it won’t work with the A watercolour ones). I used a micron pen for their eyes and beaks.

I stamped one of the ‘occasions – merry Christmas’ sentiments below them using black Archival ink. I then simply added a mount of white paper that I’d edged with a black Sharpie and attached the whole piece to a 6×6 kraft card blank.

It does feel a bit odd to be sharing a Christmas card as we’re heading towards Easter, but fear not – they will be featuring over the next few weeks as well!

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33 thoughts on “Christmas robins”

  1. Just beautiful, Deborah – I LOVE your process for layering here – what a labor of love! The effect of the black sharpie on the tiny white layer is brilliant – I must remember that one! And such sweet Christmas birds – perfect! Thanks so much for playing at Hand Stamped Sentiments AND Sparkles!

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  5. Its beautiful and those robins are so cute. The ones we see here aren’t really robins and I miss these tiny birds sometimes. Stunning result with the white on Kraft.

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  13. What an amazing card! I love the idea of using a stencil for the strips in the sketch! Your coloring of the birds was beautiful! Thanks for joining the hand stamped sentiments challenge and Happy Lent!

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  18. Oh I love this – robins are my favourites anyway but I love that white stencil in the back. What a fab stencil too. And the colouring of those robins is wonderful – I really need a good white pencil – did you say you used Pergamo? I might have to check that out. Thanks for sharing with us at Christmas Craft Creations – keep playing all year and you’ll have made a great start on those Christmas cards.

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