Silent Night - Northern Lights

Well today I broke down and made a Christmas card!  Normally I like to wait until it's a bit closer to Thanksgiving to start breaking out the Christmas stuff but I couldn't resist.  I saw a beautiful inspiration photo (from Viva Las Vegas) for their November challenge...it was a lovely turquoise/blue night sky scene which reminded me of the Northern Lights technique (which I haven't done in ages) so I figured now was a good time to pull out my inks and get a little ink stained!

When I finished the NL background it reminded me of a winter snow storm so I pulled out a fun Unity stamp and finished it off like this....

 Unity Stamps - All is Calm & Bright (deer); 

Rejoice for our Silent Night

So here's what I did...I started off by inking a piece of white (georgia pacific) cardstock randomly with several colors.  I started off with yellow, 

then added Rose Bud, Summer Sky, Teal Zeal, Bahama Blue, Paris Dusk and Elderberry in that order.  Of course once I got to inking I totally forgot to take photos!  (that happens sometimes).

Then I added Tuxedo Black around the edges and randomly in the center of the card to tone it down and make it look more like a dark night sky.  That is your northern lights background...I know it looks a bit funky but then you add stars and it really comes together.  Of course I didn't photograph that either but I did so by flicking on Wedding Dress (white) irRESISTible Texture Spray.  

For my main image I wanted to use the Unity deer so I stamped it with VersaMark and embossed with white ep.  I knew I wanted to make rolling hills but it's difficult to trim a nice even hill so I used a MFT snow drift die.  The problem is I didn't want to chop off my deers legs so I cut two small nicks on either side of the image, slid the die through and run it through my Big Shot to cut! 

All I had to do then was trim the excess cardstock around the deer and ta-da!  I have a fun scene to go over the Northern Lights background.  I did add some Wedding Dress (white) Memento Luxe ink over the ground to give it a snow-y night time feel and added a bit of glitter too cause well, you can never have too much glitter.  It was then mounted onto the card and the sentiment was added.

A really fun and easy technique once you get going and the best part - you really can get all ink stained - and you know, that's what I'm all about!