How to ground when you decoupage a stamped image

This week the focus is on Christmas cards with a nature theme on the Penny Black blog here, tomorrow I will be hosting the blog with a card that uses a stamp that I fell in love with the moment I saw it...so do check back to see tomorrow.

Today I thought I would focus on plants ...... one of natures wonders. I have used Penny Black's Snowflake and Holly stamp 4206L, it is so pretty.  Did you know there is a technique used in Decoupage called grounding?  I have used this on today's card (see close up for details).

The image was stamped onto white card three times, the background was shaded with tumbled glass and stormy sky distress ink, the edges distressed and mounted onto white card. I then coloured the Holly and Mistletoe with Copics  and added glossy accents to the berries. The sentiment is from the Let it Snow clear set 30-086. 

On the second stamped image I cut out the Writing card section and distressed the edges in the same way as the main card.  I then mounted this over the main card using dimensional foam pads.

Then I decoupaged some of the Holly and Mistletoe leaves (again coloured with Copics and cut out).  The grounding is where you have part of the raised image flat against the original image and then raise the other part ...gosh I hope this makes sense! That way it looks like the leaves have grown up from the main branches - see image below to get better detail.

Don't forget to join the Penny Black club here and leave comments on the Penny Black blog this week for chances to win stamps.