Creating a winter scene

As I am determined to make better use of my received Christmas cards this year, I decided to CASE one that I liked. It was a front step-card, showing a winter scene on the back panel, and a big robin on a post box on the 'step'.

To make my winter scene I used a tiny SeeD's snowman stamp, and a tall fir tree from Stampscapes. Then I masked these off and over-stamped them with the winter village scene which is a very old PSX stamp. I used my copic markers to add some subtle colour. I scanned the completed image and saved it as a jpg.

I calculated the size of card needed to make the complete card, and drew it out in the software for my Silhouette cameo. I traced the top edge of my scene and welded that to the base card and cut it out. I had a couple of unsuccesful attempts. The first time I forgot to remove the two small lines between the outline, and the edge so it cut where I wanted a fold! I then found I had used too thin card, thinking it would cut better with my machine. But my son Ben brought me over a new cutting mat when he came at Christmas, and perhaps due to the complaints they have had about them losing their 'stickiness too quickly,' they have now  made them much stickier, so when I peeled my card off, it tore at one corner, and just curled up into a roll!

For attempt number three I used a heavier card which took a lot of persuading for my printer to accept to print the image, but I then did a double cut (i.e. I cut it twice before removing it from the machine) and this just about worked!

For the step I used a robin stamp from Chocolate Baroque, again coloured with copic markers, and hand cut it to include the whole front strip which I glued onto the front of the step, and finished off with a red band of thin card top and bottom and a greeting cut with my Britannia die. A little bit of stickles crystal ice added a sparkle to the scene, and the robin and holly.

And here is the finished card! It actually sparkles very well but you can't see it in the photo.

I had more or less achieved what I had set out to do, but it probably didn't justify all the work. I still had my original stamped and coloured scene, so I used this to make a more straightforward card. 

The shadows in the snow are coloured with a purple/grey pen so I chose some snippets of a dull purple paper from a SU set, and cut a frame. I then used a photo-corner punch to make slots to hold the image, though I found it hard to keep it flat so I did use a little glue as well. The tall tree overhung the frame, but I quite liked that, so I didn't trim it down. As part of my 'using up some ancient stash' campaign, I dug out a purple pearlescent base card, from a huge set I purchased from QVC at least twelve years ago. These all had some embossing on them, but I found one that just had some corners embossed, and the size matched my image and frame so I was able to use it. I again added glitter glue for sparkle, and a large snowflake cut with Marianne dies from another purple snippet and some white card.

I am entering this in Crafty Hazelnuts Christmas Challenge 159, where we are asked to show some Winter weather. I doubt I will actually see any snow in our village, though there is some on top of the distant mountains, and it is still what I think of when folk talk about Winter.

I am also linking it to Craft a Scene challenge, where this month we are invited to chose out own theme, so although they did have a challenge for crafting a Winter scene a couple of months ago, I think this still fits the bill.

And the purple snippets used in the second card make it eligible for Pixie's Snippets Playground-Week 107.