Stampbord Crafty Individuals' Canvas

I made this canvas using the gorgeous new collage Christmas stamp from Crafty Individuals CI 369. You can see all the new products here.  I wanted to create a snowy woods scene where the woman has gone out to pick her Christmas tree. I wanted the main focus to be the stampbord piece, which I embossed in black. I used the main image in the centre and text from CI 257 going in different directions around the edge, masking off as I went. I coloured it with distress inks in  Iced Spruce, Festive Berries, and Shabby Shutters and then coloured the woman with a paint brush with a brown hat, Tattered Rose for her face, and Pine Needles for the tree.

I covered the canvas with tissue paper which had a pattern of fir trees and a little girl dancing on a frozen pond, then covered this with Distress Stain in Picket Fence. At this point I had intended to do loads of inking, stamping and embellishing but I was so pleased with the stampbord piece and I liked it against the snowy white background so I kept it quite plain.You can still see the trees peeking through. I am trying not to get carried away, as I know I have that tendency. So I embossed some trees from CI 257 in black ep, and some snowflakes from the Rudolf stamp CI 332, and added them with gel medium.

I did go mad with embellishing the ornament within the collage stamp though, with some pearls and gem stones - well, it would be rude not to!