Hello yet again. The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge has started a new challenge – anything goes Christmas/Festive. Here is my card:

I seem to be masking a lot recently – I blame Gina K! She showed us how easy it was when she taught on the Crop and Create at the beginning of October. I even went so far as to buy some mylar and create my own masks for shapes I will use again and again – like this oval shape……and therefore I also have the oval itself as well to use as a mask if I so wish.

I used a piece of Strathmore card stock, cut it bigger than I need – I’m always smudging stuff so I thought I’d try it that way – and placed down the piece which had the oval cut out of it.

I then decided where I wanted this gorgeous border stamp from Uniko, stamped that onto a piece of masking paper, cut out the wavy bottom bit, and stuck that down on the top of the mylar – then ink blended.

I didn’t want the ink blending below the border and this worked perfectly well – and no smudges!

Whilst the homemade stencil was still in place, I added some white ink through a dotty/snowy stencil. That didn’t work very well – the white ink was a little too juicy – so I added some white ink splatters and some additional water splashes. I think it turned out lovely:

I let this panel dry before I stamped the deer and tree border in black – having the stamp three times using my Misti (thank goodness for this tool) to get a darker and more solid image.

The sentiment is also from Uniko – some masking here too. The sentiment was too long for this card, and so I centered to have two ‘Let It Snow’ visible, and then covered the part of the stamp I didn’t want – inked it – then remembered to remove that from the stamp before stamping it on the card. Now that would have been traumatising if I had forgotten!

I shall be entering the following challenges:

Crafty Animals Challenge – anything goes with an animal

Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Creative Fingers Challenge – anything goes

Allsorts Challenge – anything goes – option vintage – not taken

Cards Galore Encore – anything goes

Jingle Belles Rock Challenge – Christmas Creatures