It's a Winter Wonderland

On the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge Blog the theme for this week is "Let it Snow".  With this in mind, I wanted to create a snowy tree for my card. Where I live, when the snow falls, there's not many creatures stirring about and I get to enjoy the beauty of watching it snow.  There is nothing so silent and peaceful than a full-on snowfall.  That probably sounds goofy, but every thing is so still and quiet when it snows. Our next door neighbors have a whole lot more trees in their actual yard so they get all the beautiful cardinals.  They always have food out for them also, but I still get to enjoy looking at them.

For my card, I wanted to portray that stillness I feel when I see a heavy snowfall starting.  So I chose to create a lone tree to symbolize that stillness.  I started by stamping the base tree from the Stampin' Up Sheltering Tree set in Onyx Black Versafine and heat setting it with Simon Says Stamp Fine Detail Clear Embossing Powder on a Simon Says Stamp Surf Blue Paper using the Simon Says Stamp Stitched Rectangle Dies.  Like Jennifer McGuire, I find black embossing powder to be a pain to keep from contaminating other projects, scraps, etc.  So I use black ink and clear powder.  I have black fine detail embossing powder if I need it, but I haven't come across an occasion so far that has required that.  Once I had heat set that, I came back in with the same tree stamp and some Delicata Silver Shimmer Ink slightly offset to give the impression of snow sticking to it and heat set that with clear embossing powder as well.

Next I used a white pigment ink (from SU!) and stamped the leaves of the tree with that to make them appear full of snow.  In real life, that doesn't happen too often, but Live Oak Trees don't lose their leaves, so that is the memory I am referencing in this particular case, *wink*.  I used the same leaves to stamp my background snow, not re-inking and using 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation stamps. My White Pigment Ink is really juicy right now because I just re-inked it not long ago so it was very easy to get multiple generations out of it.  Once I had all of that stamped in white Pigment ink, I added some Judikins Iridescent Sparkle Embossing Powder to it to make it sparkle like real snow does.  I cut the snowy slopes using the Mama Elephant Landscape Trio Dies and also stamped that a bit with the same leaves stamp to add a bit of white ink to them with more of the Iridescent Sparkle Embossing Powder.  For the greeting, I cut some of the Surf Blue Paper with a label die, cut that in half and used one of the sentiments from Mama Elephant's Jingle Greetings, heat embossing Ranger Liquid Platinum Embossing Powder.  The Liquid Platinum is a warmer color than silver.  Lastly, I assembled my card using a top folding card base.  

that using Versamark and

I made this card yesterday along with the one from my previous blog post, but I couldn't seem to think through writing the post because my "puppies" (as I call them) were demanding attention.  I snuck out of bed this morning while everyone else was still sleeping so that I could get this post written without interruption.

While I do plan to take some time this weekend to get some of my Christmas Cards ready to mail, I received my Double Scoop Gelatos this week that I had ordered on a phenomenal Black Friday Deal and my goal is to have time to play with them this weekend.  Therefore, I'll be back as soon as I can with another project.  Thanks for stopping by today.