Craft A Scene - Snowy cottages week 1

Happy New Year to you all.

This is my first offering for the year for the Craft A Scene challenge - Snowy Cottages.  Hope you are all going to join us here this year. Our sponsor for the month of January are Delicious Doodles, who generously gave us some beautiful images to play with.

I decided to combine two images by changing the postbox.  The original scene had a US mailbox.  I  liked the background, but I really wanted the British postbox (I did debate making it a golden one in celebration of all those gold medals, but I thought the traditional red one was better).  One of our other donated images had this beautiful GR box, so I cut it out digitally (using My Craft Studio) and superimposed it on top of the US mailbox.   I did not want to go over the top with colour as the shading on the original is so good, so went with my Daler-Rowney watercolours and paint brush (I use a waterfilled brush rather than risk a pot of water on my table - it works for me).  I have not used those for a while, so it was almost lie starting at the beginning.

I heat embossed the snowy branches first with kaleidoscopic embossing powder to protect them from the paint (and the snowy bits on the conifers), and finished off with some speckles of glitter (which, as usual, does not show up on the photo).  I also added a little Polar White Flower Soft on the top of the postbox. 

I was not at all sure about the result after I had finished, but I took it down to show my wonderful husband, who is my most trusted critic, and he liked it, so I left it alone and just mounted it up on the card. 

I had another go with oil and pencil pastels afterwards to see how they would work.  As you can see from the smudges, I need a lot more practice to get that right.  Pastels are a totally new medium for me - only just arrived in the post today (an early Christmas pressie).  

Please come and join us this month with your interpretations of the challenge.  All you have to do is to create a scene, with a background and a foreground in whatever medium you choose.  Try something you have never had the courage to do before.  You will be amazed what you learn and find you really love.  I am hoping to really come to terms with drawing my own scenes this year.  I know what I want, but you will be able to judge as the year goes on whether I am succeeding.  

My resolution for this year is - Don't be scared, Have a go.  Come and join me with that.