Not Christmas in July?

The current challenge on the Art Impressions blog is Create With Christmas - and we want you to use your Christmas stamps to make a NON-Christmas card!  Hmm... you may have to give this one a little thought.  Or maybe an idea popped right into your head?  I knew fairly quickly that I wanted to use the WC Series 4 sets - (Sku# 4097 & 4098) I've had them for a while, and intended to use them for Christmas cards - but knew that they would work for this challenge.  Here's what I've come up with:

 I know, you're thinking, "Karen, those don't exactly look like Christmas images."  But that basket is actually full of ornaments, that I made into apples, and the bird is intended to be decorating a Christmas tree.  I've used Tombow markers to colour directly onto my stamps - which is why I could selectively colour the ornaments, leaving off the 'hooks' to turn them into apples.  I added some grass & foliage and went over everything with a wet paintbrush to soften the edges and pull out the colours.  I used some distress ink to paint in the sky.

The picture made me think picnic - so I grabbed a square of gingham-like paper to sneak in behind it.  Here are pictures of the stamp sets that I've created my scene from, I did a couple using the birdhouse as well, which I'll make up and post over the summer.  

 Head on over to the Ai blog to see what the other designers have to share today - and see how creative you can be with your own challenge entry!