CCT - Sketch ....

.... Good morning! I do hope that you've all recovered from your holiday celebrations. It always seems to me that it takes ages to get all the preparations done and then Christmas is gone in an instance!

The purpose of our challenges at our revamped Christmas Card Throwdown is to help in your preparations. Get a head start on the season by joining us on the first and third Saturday of each month, where we will provide you a variety of challenges including colours, themes, sketches, techniques and stash to help in your creative process.

The first challenge this year is a sketch - CCT01. It's quite a simple sketch - you can flip it, turn it, keep it very CAS or go full shabby chic - the choice is yours. However, we must be able to see the sketch in your finished card. Here's my take on the sketch:

Stamps: Waltzingmouse - Scandi Doodle Christmas, Flurries; Stampin' Up! - Wonderland; Visible Image - Rays of Light
Inks: SU - Soft Sky, Crushed Curry; Versafine - Onyx Black; Memento - Tuxedo Black
Accessories: White Luste Card; Tim Holtz Watercolour Card; Clear Embossing Powder; Zig Clean Colour Brushes; Spectrum Noir Sparkle - Clear; Copics

This card is not the one I had planned! I was going to create an envelope, but going through my stash of stamps I found this wonderful Christmas tree stamp and decided to use that instead. I stamped the image on watercolour card and heat embossed with clear powder. I used my Zig Clean Colour brushes and an aqua brush to colour the image. I find using watercolour paint a bit difficult, but using these pens gives a similar result and, for me, are much easier to use! I did use my clear Spectrum Noir sparkle brush to move some of the colours so the image has a lovely shimmer - sadly not visible above! Once the image was dry I fussy cut it out. I stamped some pale snowflakes all over the base of the card and added a star burst image behind the star. I ran the tree image through my Xyron to make it self-adhesive and then attached it to the card. On the inside I cut a mat layer of pale blue card. On the white panel I stamped a few more images from the Scandi Doodle set (this set is discontinued) and coloured them with a mixture of Copics and Zig Clean Colour. I finished by adding a simple sentiment.

I took a close-up photo of the tree so you can see the details and, hopefully, a bit of the shimmer:

Do visit our blog, Christmas Card Throwdown, to see our lovely new look and to see more inspiration cards from our newly expanded design team. Don't forget to visit them and leave some comments - we all love to receive them. As we now have challenges twice a month, it means you have longer to play. Deadline for submission to this challenge is midnight Friday 20th January, that's 7.00pm EDT.

I'm submitting this card to Love to Craft Challenge Blog - LTCCB#06 where it's ANYTHING GOES. I like this blog as you can submit any type of crafty project - it's worth a look! That's all for now!