Nature Heals

My card this week was for a friend who’s been going through a difficult time lately.  I wanted to create a scene as though looking up through the trees to a night sky from the forest floor.  With hindsight, I probably should have stamped the trees further into the centre but I wanted to leave space for the sentiment, which I hadn’t decided on at the start.  This card also stretches your stash in that the tree is from a festive stamp set.

First, I created my night sky by spraying Picked Raspberry and Dusty Concord Distress Spray Stains and Picked Raspberry and Wilted Violet Distress Shimmer Sprays onto damp card.  Once dry, I spattered some Dr Ph Martin’s Bleedproof White ink for the stars.  I like to start with a panel larger than needed so that I have a handle and I can trim off any dodgy areas.

Using the largest tree from Visible Image Christmas Eve stamp set and Versafine Clair Nocturne, I started by stamping the corner trees at roughly 45˚ towards the centre.

The stamping continued around the panel, always angling the trees to the centre, until the panel was complete.

For the sentiment, I found the perfect one in Visible Image Totally Toadstools.  It was in completely the wrong alignment though so I performed a bit of stamp surgery so that I could stack the words on top of each other.  I simply cut a straight line between each word so that I could easily line them up in their original format in future.

For a bit of sparkle, I masked the sentiment so I didn’t obliterate it and spattered with gold watercolour paint.

To bring out the gold flecks, the panel was mounted on gold foil and then onto a white card base.