Penguins In The Snowy Night

This weekend I just withdrew into the craft room. It's my place of safety, comfort and re-charging the batteries. It's been a tough week, and quite a rollercoaster weekend. But when I surround myself with my stamps, dies and inks I feel like none of the bad stuff can touch me. I love how I can completely lose myself in the crafting for hours at a time. 

I love starting my crafty session with a browse of the the current challenges. This time I absorbed inspiration from the current sketch over at Freshly Made Sketches as well as the gorgeous inspiration image over at Inspired By All the Small Things. I'm also linking up over at House of Cards where the challenge this month is Create a Scene and Just Add Ink where the theme is Just Add L (I used L for Layers, I hardly ever do add as many layers as I have here.)

I started by creating the starry night sky using smooshing. I started by inking up my craft mat with yellow and green Tim Holtz Inks, spraying and smooshing my watercolour paper. Then I started building dark blue and black, adding some layers of yellow and green again from time to time, and drying between some of the layers. When I had reached the look I like, I dried the background completely and splattered with white acrylic paint. As I thought the sky actually looked more like a snowy than a starry sky I thought I would go down the winter scene route although the weekend has felt very much like spring.

While the acrylic paint was drying I stamped, coloured and die cut the penguins and built the little scene. I then die cut the background papers and adhered everything in place. I added some gold Wink of Stella to some of the yellow bits in the sky, but it doesn't show in the picture. In real life it adds a nice little sparkle to some parts of the night sky. Last, I added some more white splatters with my gel pen, as the Picket Fence splatters dried quite faint in some parts of the sky. I love how the smooching technique just turns out so random, and you never know what you will get.

Card: 250 gsm white card, 190 gsm watercolour paper

Ink and colouring: Tim Holtz Distress inks Squeezed Lemonade, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron, Mowed Lawn, Chipped Sapphire, Black Soot, Tsukineko Memento Tuxedo Black, Copics, Tim Holtz Distress Paint Picket Fence

Stamps: Lawn Fawn Snow Cool and matching dies

Paper: Stampin' Up Christmas 2013 paper (sorry, can't remember the name), Lawn Fawn Let's Polka in the Meadow

Other: Lawn Fawn Stitched Rectangle Dies, Stitched Borders dies, Stitched Hillside Border dies, Signo white Gel Pen