For my Christmas influenced sustained investigation, I decided to make a real life gingerbread house as my third piece.

I started by getting a background, that is a picture of the woods, and a picture of the gingerbread house. To help the gingerbread house blend in, I added a color balance filter that put an emphasis on the colors blue and cyan. I also desaturated the picture of the gingerbread house. I then downloaded a snow brush and used it to make a falling snow effect.

I then added peppermints at the bottom to create a path to the house. I did this by layer masking and blending with the snow brush. I also desaturated the background a little bit so you could see the falling snow more.

I added candy canes by using the same process that I used with the peppermints.

Next, I added a gingerbread moose. I did this by cutting out the gingerbread moose image and layer masking it with the image of the fur to make it look somewhat "realistic". I also gave the moose a Santa hat.

Lastly, I added a tint to the image. I did this by using a color balance filter and shifting it toward the colors yellow and red. I also used a brown gradient and used the hard light blend mode.