This beautiful card featuring an owl perched in tree under a lazy quarter moon hanging in the distance used an owl image from Sweet November Stamps - Fall is in the Air.

I stamped the owl and the branch in what I thought was about the desired position on a piece of 4 1/4 x 5 white cardstock. I stamped the image a 2nd time on a sticky note and fussy cut that image out and and stuck it over the owl on my card front to create a mask.

At this point I became aware I was going to need a tree to attach that branch to, so with a light pencil I roughly sketched in the whereabouts of the tree. Nothing fancy at this point just the general location of it. I used sticky notes again to mask off the section where my imaginary tree was going to be.

I used a circle die to cut a moon from a sticky note, and then placed the same circle I had just die cut to create the quarter moon and cut that out. I now had a mask for my quarter moon.

I placed the mask where I intended the moon to be on my card front.

I cut a piece of copy paper to approximately the same size as the card front layer and then tore across the paper to create a rough edge that could be used as a mask for the snowy ground at the bottom of the scene. Since I want to the snow to be white that area would need to be masked as well.

Once all the masks were in place, I was ready to start to blend that night sky. I picked 3 shades of blue from light to dark and 1 darker purple shade. Starting with my lightest color I blended a lighter shade of blue all around on the exposed parts of the layer.

Using the medium tone of blue I blended all of the areas of the card except where I imagined the light from the moon would be.

Next I blended into the sky with darker purple ink ( though purple it still has tones of blue ). Again, not fully covering the lighter blue as the moonlight area and the 2nd. blue tone around that same area, to create the illusion of a darkening sky in the distance.

Finally I used the darkest blue shade of ink to blend out to the outer edges of the card leaving it darkest at the points of the scene that would be farthest away or shadowed on the underside of the tree branch.

When I am happy with the night sky blending, I chose a random tree stamp and stamped in black ink to create the dark tree images, stamped at different heights.

I removed the mask at the bottom of the card panel and lightly blend with leftovers from the blending brush onto the ground section that will be snow. This coverage is very light. I then used a tiny blending brush and some white pigment ink and just pounced the brush around to create a some dimension on the snowy ground.

I remove the sticky notes creating the mask for the tree and with a black fine liner pen sketch in the tree and and some defining marks in the tree to resemble bark. I used shades of brown Copic markers to color in the tree, create some shadowing and incorporate that branch that was stamped with the owl into the actual tree.

Onto the moon - using a small blending brush I blended shades of yellow and a little grey to color in the quarter moon, adding some light around the edges of the moon with white pigment ink and a blending brush. Then just using my finger to swipe the ink away from the moon blending it into the background. It creates that glow around the moon.

I then colored the owl using Copic Markers in shades of grey.

I used a white gel pen to add some small dots into the sky area to pose as twinkling stars.

I used a shimmer pen to add sparkle to the moon and the snow on the ground.

I stamped the greeting on a scrap of white cardstock and adhered it in place.

Added a few Spellbinder prism rhinestones to the card front.

I trimmed the card front panel to 4 1/8 x 5 3/8 and then adhered the panel to a card base cut at

4 1/4 x 11, Scored at 5 1/2.

This beautiful card was finished and ready to send! Someone who appreciates nature or a night sky is going to love this hand made card!