Snowy Mountains December Daily Tutorial

Hello friends! It is time for one of my favorite posts every year. I really like Ali Edwards' concept of a December Daily and this will be my eight year of documenting our month of December. I do something of a mini version, focusing more on words than on photos. This is partly since I don't print photos at home, so having new photos daily becomes impractical. Instead, I write daily, and add some photos later.

For the past seven years, I have done my December Daily in one of Tim Holtz's Worn Binders. It's a great format and all my journals look nice standing together in a book shelf. But even though I use the same base, the journals look very different from each other. Last years journal was a birch forest, and the year before that I did a Narnia theme. This year, we are going to the peaceful winter mountains. I used fairly light colors, to increase the feeling of peace and tranquility, and of spaces filled only with nature. The mountains and trees were die cut with Tim Holtz's Alpine set.

I used the Tattered Worn Binder. Start by coating the cover with gesso. This requires some patience since you need to add quite mainly layers to cover up the background, since the gesso soaks into the cover. Let dry in between.

Die cut pieces for two mountains from watercolor paper and glue them to the background with matte medium.

I also die cut some Crochet borders, to look like snowy hills, and for their great texture.

Continue by gluing trees to the background, overlapping some of them.

Now, add thick layers of white texture paste at the front and a bit further into the scene. Cover up some of the crochet pieces and the bases of some of the trees. Let dry.

Now you can start painting the scene. I used Distress Paints. Don't worry about getting it perfect.

The sky was painted with Tumbled Glass, Salty Ocean, and then Dina Wakley's white paint at the bottom. I also painted the snow areas with Dina's white paint, to make them even whiter.

Add some white dry-brushing to the trees and the mountain sides.

Shade the snow with Pumice Stone and the trees and mountains with Hickory Smoke and Black Soot. This step adds dimension, and if you want a piece with darker colors, you can add even more shadows. You can also make the top of the sky darker to turn it into a dusk setting (check out my Narnia book for an example of this).

Splatter white paint pretty heavily on the sky and all over the scene.

Here's a close up of the white splatters, creating snowfall. White paint was rubbed into the three metallic pieces.

By gluing the die cuts to the background before coloring, you make them more a part of the background. It doesn't look like they were glued on top of the background. If you want to, you can add some paste to the top of the mountains too.

The trees were painted with Pine Tree and Peeled Paint, and I like how these two green shades mix on the trees.

You could add even more trees to make a denser forest, but I only wanted a sprinkling.

 

I picked some sentiments from Tim's Christmas Sticker Book for my cover. They form something like a found poem.

And the words are continued at the bottom of the scene. Here you can also see the texture of the paste and crochet snow better.

For the spine, I painted a piece of watercolor paper with the two green colors used on the tree, splattered with white paint and die cut the year with Tim's Letterboard die.

Last year, I continued my winter scene on the back cover, but this year, I decided to keep it plain.

I am now looking forward to filling my journal with memories, even though I can't believe that December starts so soon. In a couple of days, I will be back with a post showing you the process of making the inside pages. They are drying all over my floor as I am typing this up.

If you want more inspiration, check out my previous December Daily journals:  

2018 - Birch Forest December Daily

2017 - Narnia December Daily

2016 - Winter Village December Daily video

2015 - Believe December Daily

2014 - December Daily

2013 - Christmas Daily

2012 - December Mini-book

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy Christmas crafting!

Anna-Karin

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