Well my friends the changing season has certainly brought a winter chill to the air – time to create a winter scene I think. There’s no doubt that there is something beautiful about snow and in the world of Lavinia stamps and magical landscapes- anything goes!

Today’s project uses the following stamps:

Sirlus

Fairy fir tree (large and small)

Stars -2

Seasons-change

The steps:

This time I began by using an inky scrap which really was created by a ‘mopping up’ exercise after an ink spray session. I liked the colours and the fact that it had lots of white space.

After trimming it back I decided to create a landscape background using soft pastels. That way I could enhance the colours and blend in some of the shapes to look more like sky and mountains.

Once I was happy with it I sprayed it with fixative. I then began the stamping. Taking the larger tree and two colours of distress oxide ink (coral and lilac) I lightly stamped some background trees. I stamped Silus on to copy paper and cut it out to use as a mask. Then using the same lilac distress oxide ink and the mask I stamped the image three times.

I created dimension and perspective by lightly colouring the images using charcoal pencil and pastels. The image at the front had deeper colour and I used more faded colour for the images further back. I also loosely drew in shadows under their hooves freehand. A white gel pen was used to highlight their maines and to add dots of snow here and there.

I thought that the picture needed more white so I stamped and heat embossed the larger tree several times using white sparkle embossing powder. I later added extra twinkle by stamping the smaller tree and heat embossing the images using purple sparkle embossing powder. The stars were heat embossed in the same white sparkle as the larger trees.

I added extra detail to the main images with a black fine liner pen and some diamond stickles glitter to the wings and in the background. Finally I stamped the sentiment in the white area at the bottom of the picture.

I think this shows that even when using a silhouette stamp, if it is stamped in a pale colour you can still add detail on top if you wish. I wanted to keep the picture light and therefore felt that a dark block colour would not be suitable in this instance. Also you should never give up on an inky scrap. There’s always a story in there somewhere!

Till next time…

Lisa xx