Oh the weather outside is frightful

At least it was this morning, which gave me a great excuse to stay inside, in the warm and get started on my Christmas cards.  Caz has asked me to be a guest blogger this week which gave me a great excuse (not that I needed one) to use this fabulous stamp from Wild Rose Studio

This particular one is called Christmas Cuddles and features the ever so cuddly Pickles the Penguin.  The Paperlane has this one in stock along with the rest of the range and they are all absolutely gorgeous.  They lend themselves to a multitude of Christmas designs but, after much deliberation, this is what I have decided to go with

Using Black Memento Ink, I stamped the image into the centre of a 5" by 5" card

I then made a mask by stamping the image onto some cheap white card (no point in using your best card for this, no one is going to see it), cutting it out and blue tacking it onto the card blank.

Now comes the really fun (if messy) part.  It's time to create the background of the card using Tim Holtz Distress Inks.  Firstly, I took Tumbled Glass and applied it all over the card using circular motions and a foam blender.  Don't worry about going over the mask, that's what it's there for.

Now do the same with Broken China but don't bring the colour as far into the centre of the card.

Now repeat with Faded Jeans but keep the colour to the edges of the card

Now leave your image to dry for a wee while (it takes about 10 minutes) and then you're ready to create your snowflake background.  Ink up the stamp of your choice (I used a Great Impressions background stamp) with a white ink pad (I used Brilliance but you could use any you choose, or you could use a VersaMark and some embossing powders).  Leave the mask in place and stamp over the top.

Leave it to dry and then carefully remove your mask.  You can now colour in your image.  I used a combination of ProMarkers, Copics (for the hat) and Stickles (for the fur and the pompom)    

Your final image should look something like this......

I hope you'll agree that he looks really cute and Christmassy and that the use of Distress Inks really gives the background an extra dimension.  I'm now off to wash Faded Jeans off my hands :-0

Happy Crafting

Caroline

aka

The InkBug

P.s.  All the items in blue are available at The Paperlane