Blizzards!

One of the challenges in the recent VSN "Cabaret" was to create a card with the appearance of snow falling..... having the snow appear to be falling in the image.

Living in an area where we experience blizzards on a fairly regular basis has no advantage in a challenge like this! But here is how I created that effect in my card, which I made for our adopted soldier in Iraq.

In order to create the illusion of snow falling around the snowman, I first created falling snow as a back drop. I did this using my trusty hairbrush and white acrylic paint.

I put a few drops of white acrylic paint (FolkArt's Wicker White) into the foam plate (which I reuse all the time) and tap it with the bristles of the brush, tapping in the paint and off to the side as well, to leave just a bit on the bristles. Then I tap it onto my card stock.

When I tap on the card stock, I tap it first on an area off to the side or on a scrap just to see if I have too much or too little paint, and how the paint is going to "take". It usually takes a very light touch, and, you want to just tap the paper randomly. Then, once I have the "feel", I tap "snow" onto the area where I want to cut my background. I generally cut my background piece from the piece I tap with "snow", rather than cut the paper piece and tap it. That way, if I smudge or get a little too much paint in one area, I can work around it.

In the case of my soldier snowman, I wanted him to appear to be into the midst of the blizzard, so I took a piece of acetate and tapped snow on it the same way. Acrylic dries very quickly on acetate. Then I layered the acetate over the snowman, so he looks as if he is right in the midst of a snowstorm, with snow falling all around him.

For the card I made for today's Sketch Challenge, I used this tapping method to make the snow fall background for my snowman. I like this technique because it give s a very "natural" look and it is very quick and easy.