Watercolour Winter Wonderland!

Hi everyone, Jen here! Are you guys getting excited for Christmas yet? I am, Christmas is my favorite time of year!!! Well as the big day is only just over a month away, I thought I would share a cute wintery Christmas card with you all this month.

Products used

I Also used the following items from my craft stash,

Dark Gray US A2 card base,

Watercolor paints,

Size 2 round watercolor brush,

White gouache for paint splattering,

Foam tape,

Tiny silver gems.

I began by cutting a piece of LDRS creative cotton watercolor paper down to an A2 panel and tacked it to the top plate of my letterpress machine with some low tack tape. I centered the Merry Christmas Press Plate onto the bottom platform and inked it with LDRS Alloy Hybrid Ink. I clipped the top plate into place on the base platform and ran the whole thing through my die cut machine. (I did need to re-ink the press plate 3 times to get a clean crisp impression due to the all the fine details in the image). 

**Tip**

To avoid getting a shadow image, I taped the base plate to the platform so that it wouldn't shift with each pass through the die cut machine!

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I chose the grey ink as I wanted a softer look as sometimes black can be a bit too harsh in my opinion.

Next I took some watercolor paints from my stash and a small, size 2 round paint brush to colour this stunning image. The LDRS cotton watercolor paper takes the paint beautifully! I worked in sections allowing each one to dry before working on an adjacent section. This technique stops the colors running into each other and ruining the whole project.

For a more realistic look, I made sure to use several shades of green for the forrestry and used more concentrated color when adding the details to the cosy looking cabin.

To add some snow and a little texture, I watered down a small amount of white gouache and splattered it onto the background, then set it aside to dry.

For the card base, I took a piece of 8.5 x 11 dark grey card, then cut and scored it into a top opening landscape US A2 card base. 

Once dry, I cut the background panel down to slightly smaller than my card base with the second largest Hand torn rectangle die. It was then mounted onto the card with a little foam tape. Finally I added a few small silver gems to complete this pretty card!

I'm not by any means an expert with watercolors but I am very pleased with how this turned out!

I'll catch you all again soon!