Cure for the Winter Blues

So, last night I'm reading through the blogs and websites on my Google Reader list.  I like to read "A Blog Called Wanda"  (check it out here).  She was talking about The Cure for the Winter Blues Challenge at Moxie Fab World.  I followed the trail of breadcrumbs and was shortly off on another project.

Yesterday, I was thinking that I didn't really have anything creative in the works at the moment.  I've been so busy getting ready for Open House and doing the samples I needed to get done that when Open House was over, I suddenly found myself with some choices and had to step back a bit to look for direction.  This Winter Blues Challenge came at the perfect time and it really did challenge me a bit.

I'm not a huge fan of navy blue.  It's "professional".  I mean, I don't hate it, but I generally don't use it to decorate and I don't dress in it.  As a consequence, I'm kind of short on navy blue items in my stash.  Was I up to this challenge?  Did I even have enough to create something worthwhile?

Winter.  Navy blue.  Night sky.  Crisp.  Clear.  Cold.  Peaceful. "In the stillness of a frosty winter night....peace."  Love that, but...too Christmas-y.  (And in the end, too long for my project.)  Oooo...a Tim Holtz stamp with three pine trees in silhouette.  I can use that.  And.....Martha Stewart's Silver Ink Pad.  Oh, here's some muted silver paper and some glittery snow white paper from the Immortal Stack by Die Cuts with a View.  Oh, yeah...now I'm on a roll.....

I started with white cardstock then layered the silver and the white glittery paper on top, finishing the base of the card with a navy blue layer.  I did find a nice shade of navy blue from Recollections by Michaels, by the way.

With the base layers complete, I pulled out the silver ink pad and inked up the stamp with the three pine trees on it.  I made two impressions.  The first layer was bolder, of course.  To bring one tree out to the forefront, I filled it in with a silver Sharpie paint pen.  Stamping again without re-inking the stamp created the lighter impression, giving the look of trees in the background.  I inked the stamp up again, and stamped a piece of white paper.  I cut out the center tree, colored it in with the silver Sharpie paint pen, and popped it out with some tiny foam pop dots.

To create the look of the hills in the background and write the words, I used a white gel pen by Gelly Roll.

The "stars" are dots made by the silver Sharpie paint pen.  Three Swarovski crystals by Jolee were added for sparkle.  I finished the card off with a sheer navy blue ribbon from Michaels.

Enjoy my cure for the winter blues...  :)

Do be impresssed, won't  you?  It took me forever to get that "star" (crystal) to twinkle just right!  :)

I took this one so you could see the silver trees.  In quite a few of the pictures, the trees looked white.  You can also see two of the crystals in this one.

I like the depth of the trees in this shot.  I really brings out all of the levels.

Twinkle, twinkle little star....  A closer shot of the trees and stars.

Peaceful, isn't it?  See, now....winter isn't quite so bad, is it?  :)

Take care ~

Kath