Masking and sponging is a lot of fun – and gives me an opportunity to showcase yet another Christmas card. 🙂 My eagerly anticipated back-ordered stamp set White Christmas arrived last Thursday and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.

Base: 8.5″ by 5.5″ whisper white

Mat: 4″ by 5.25″ cherry cobbler

Top Layer: 3.75″ by 5″ whisper white

Stamp set: White Christmas

Ink: Memento black ink (I really like that the usual Stampin’ Mist will clean this off stamps – and it doesn’t smudge), soft sky.

Colouring: Cherry cobbler blendabilities (medium), colour lifter and garden green stampin’ marker

I started by stamping the trees onto a piece of scrap card. This image includes the hill. I cut along the line of the hill and let it extend to the edge of the card to create the mask. Then I took my top layer piece of whisper white and put the mask in place and using a sponge, dabbed soft sky onto the upper portion of the card. I ensured that I didn’t make it a uniform colour – since the sky isn’t – and ended up with the effect of a cold cloudy day.

Next I stamped the trees and then the car on the hill and then the tree on top of the car. It was easy to get the placement because this set is a see through photopolymer set. I coloured the car with the cherry red blendability medium pen and used the colour lifter under the windows for a bit of contrast. Colouring the tree in garden green was the final step before sticking all the layers together. Of course I lined the envelope using the background DSP stack and the envelope liner framelits. I’ve been finding that it’s more efficient – and quite relaxing – to cut a 12″ by 12″ sheet from this stack into 8 pieces of 3″ by 6″ and run them all through the big shot one after another to produce 8 envelope liners. This may be because my big shot lives on the opposite side of the table from where I stamp and it saves me from getting up to cut out a single (or more) liner.