Christmas is in the works

I am playing along with the Just Add Ink Inspiration #630 Challenge! The inspiration photo is fantastic and so much can be done with it! I went with the obvious red choice in the inspiration photo with touches of black and bronze!

Understanding different color mediums was a goal I gave myself mid year. While life and recently 3 flu viruses have run rampant in our home, I have not been left with to many practice days. So the way this background piece turned out is very special to me. I have a long way to go with with watercolors and will continue soaking up every minute of the learning process.

The background was created using the red shades from my Altenew watercolor pallet. And has accents of shimmer from the Stary Colors pallet. For my journey with watercolors I attempted the bokeh technique. I absolutely love the variance you can get with the colors in the circles. It is so simple if you want a darker circle don’t pull off as much pigment, a light circle then pull of more pigment! Keep going until you are happy. I decided that the background need to have a touch more shimmer and did simple swipe of the brush with the bronze color on some of the circles. I think it really made the bokeh technique pop. I added edging highlights by rubbing Heavy Gesso to the sides and corners of the background piece. As this is only meant to be a highlight I did not edge the entire piece. A bit of white and bronze splatter and the background piece is finished!

I used my Scan N Cut to cut out the tree from a free SVG I found at HelloSVG.com. The tree was cut from a piece of bronze Stampin’ Up! specialty paper from few years back, I like the chunky glitter look. The sentiment is heat embossed in white WOW! embossing powder on black card stock. Then I gave a faux distress look to it with White Gesso and a bit of the bronze Starry Color watercolor.

I hope you enjoyed this card. If you did Leave a comment and let me know! Until next time, Happy Crafting.