Winter Post - Unscripted Sketches #114

I needed to cool off on this hot day in July, and this card I made for the Unscripted Sketches certainly cooled me down.  The week the challenge is to use the sketch here to make a Christmas card.  Christmas certainly is coming early this year!!

Here's my card:

I combined 4 stamp sets to make this card.  And because I don't have any of the new designer paper yet, I relied on stamping the background and embossing folders to provide some contrast and interest.
The focal image was made using the masking technique so that the skaters look like they are in front of the trees.
The images were colored with chalk and a blender pen.  I added some skating marks, and some dazzling diamonds on the skating surface.  In the sky I used the end of a paint brush and white acrylic paint to make snow flakes in the sky.  To make them sparkle I sprinkled dazzling diamonds on the paint while it was still wet.
Rather than cut the image, I decided to attach a small sliver of Early Espresso both vertically and horizontally to make it look like they were skating behind a fence.
The snowflake was made using the snowflake die #2.  Dazzling diamonds was applied using the 2 way glue pen.
The focal image was applied to a background, the bottom of which was stamped randomly with a snowflake from Winter Post, and the top piece Marina Mist embossed with the Northern Flurries embossing folder.
The Sentiment is from Gifts of Christmas.
The base of the card if Marina Mist.  The mat layer is Whisper White in which I randomly stamped the snowflake images from Serene Snowflakes.

Stamps: Winter Post, Serene Snowflakes, Gifts of Christmas, Lovely as a Tree
Inks: Marina Mist, Chalk, Early Espresso
Papers: Whisper White, Marina Mist, Early Espresso
Accessories: Blender pen, White acrylic paint, Dazzling diamonds, 1" circle punch, Word Window Punch, Modern Label Punch, Snowflake die #12, Northern Flurries embossing folder, Stampin dimensionals.