An aperture card for Bah Humbug

I'm back on a roll with my weekly Christmas cards for the challenge over at Bah Humbug after my bad start to the year. I love making christmas cards so its great to make them through the year and save that last minute panic. Anyway the lovely ladies of Bah Humbug Hall have challenged us to use an aperture in our creations this week. For my card i've used a circular aperture for the moon on this little scene I created

I've just got the 'New England Winter' stamp plate from Elusive Images or perhaps I should say Chocolate Baroque now and I was itching to use the beautiful cottage stamp. I stamped and masked the large cottage on some glossy card and stamped the smaller house and trees (also from Elusive images) and then inked the background with a shaving brush. I bravely splattered water all over my carefully created background to create the effect of snow.

The image is coloured with promarkers, now I love promarkers but colouring on glossy card is a totally different ball game to ordinary card. I've seen Barbara Gray recommend letting each colour dry but I haven't the patience for that lol. I've found it best to lay down a layer of a really pale colour like ivory and then add the other colours over it. I've added some white gel pen snow and lots of snowflake white glitter although its a bit camera shy :-)

Now the aperture was a bit of a headache as I suddenly decided I wanted to use this beautiful sentiment by Clarity stamps in side the moon but my card was too small to fit the circle in. I'd planned on using my cricut but after a lot of head scratching I went for it with my Lighthouse shape cutter and cut the circle part way round until I got to the trees and housetop and then carefully cut round them. Talk about crafting by the seat of your pants lol! I'd have been really miffed if I'd snipped off the top of one of the trees. Anyway all went smoothly and I managed not to lop the trees. The sentiment is stamped on vellum and the main image is layered up with 3d foam and edged with gold krylon pen.

I'm also entering this card in the following challenges:

Crafty Hazelnut's Christmas challenge: use gold

Crazy 4 Challenges : Include a tree on your project

I did it creations: Masking

Paper Romance: Use as many colours as possible

Pollycraft: Fly me to the moon

Stampin Vacation: Glitter

Sweet Stamps: Parchment/Vellum

Lawnscaping: Use a stamp in an unusual way (stamping the sentiment on the moon)

Thanks for visiting today. i've had a lovely day messing around with ink and stuff. I'm going to grab my place on the sofa now ready for Dancing on Ice. I love Sunday evenings, its such a shame Monday mornings follow so quickly lol

Claire xx