Night Bus

 London's night bus service is iconic, although I can't say I've had a lot of luck on the odd occasions I've tried to use it. Nevertheless, the idea of a moonlight bus ride past our iconic sights is quite romantic, isn't it? 

For this card I stamped the city skyline using a Clearly Besotted stamp, then stamped it again onto masking paper, cut it out and used it to mask the image. I also masked off the rest of the card, leaving a rectangle around the image, and sponged dark blue ink over the space. 

Then it all started to go a bit pear shaped. I wanted to make the night sky by spattering dilute white gesso, but it's only the second time I've done any spattering and I think I didn't dilute the gesso enough because I got lots of blobby bits. One of them was so big that I teased it outwards a bit with a paintbrush and made it into a moon. I think the rest are too big to be stars, so lets' pretend I'd intended it to be a heavy snowstorm. It looks as if the snow is really building up on the turrets of Tower Bridge! 

Before the spattering, I'd intended adding some shading to the buildings but now they are in a snowstorm, I think they are better left white - the glare from freshly fallen thick snow often gives buildings a flat, shadowless look, so I left them white. 

The London bus is cut with an X-Cut die from their London Build-a-Scene set. 

I am sharing this with

Time Out Challenges - Life in the City  (I've also used sponging) 

Alphabet Challenge - Traffic 

CAS Mix Up - splatters & stamping & masking, sponging, die cutting  

Inkspirational - Mask 

Craft Rocket Challenge - For the boys/men