Hopefully this wintry card will make us see winter in a different light!

Good evening all from cold, wintry Ohio. The weather outside is frightful and I am sick of being snowed on. Let's all think Spring and maybe, just maybe, it will get here soon. Not soon enough for me at this point though. I guess it could be worse, I could be living in NY where they are getting hammered way worse than we are.

I thought this evening I would share with you a card that is wintry looking but it does have a sign of spring in it with the birdy that is sitting on the branch. I originally got the idea for the card from a lady's great blog site that I have been following for some time. Her name is Michelle Zindorf and she is one talented woman. Her cards are gorgeous and she uses a great brayer technique for most of her cards. I am trying to learn how to use a brayer but definitely still in the learning process. Here is a link to Michelle's site, if you have a moment, or hour or two, check it out. www.zindorf.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/ She does do brayer workshops but it is a little out of my price range but would love someday to be able to go.

The layers are as follows:

Top layer: white cardstock

Next layer: white cardstock

Next layer: black cardstock

Bottom layer is a dark blue card base

To do the card, I used a stamp with sawgrass image loaded with Versamark Watermark. Stamped the image on the bottom of the card. Re-inked and stamped it across until I was satisfied with it. I then applied clear embossing powder and heated it with a heat gun. I then used a sponge with Versamark and added that to the very bottom edge to give the illusion of snow. Added embossing powder, and heated with heat gun. Next, I used a light blue ink and my brayer. I started at the top of the card and brayered all the way to the bottom. Use an old cloth to wipe off the ink from the image at the bottom. Then I used a medium blue ink and brayered from the top but did not cover all the light blue. Wipe off the image again, if needed. Dark blue ink and brayer were used at just the very top of the card. The bird and the branch were cut out using the Cricut and the Make the Cut program. A friend of mine, Trina Macko, was kind enough to share her original file but I was able to change it up, thanks to MTC, to make it into a wintry branch instead of a summer branch. I used tan chalk to color the bottom half of the bird, then a grey chalk to do the top half. I left an area in the middle without any chalk. I did the wing with grey chalk. Finally, I used a black Tombow marker along the the edges of the branches, the top of the bird and wing, the leg, beak and the eye. I then used a white gel pen to put a small dot in the eyeball. I stamped the sentiment "Thinking of You" with Versafine black ink, put clear embossing powder on that and heated with my heat gun.

I layered my stamped image on top of the plain white cardstock. Then layered that on top of the black cardstock. I used a square bracketed shape cut from Cricut, again with MTC, to wrap around the edges of those layers. There is a nestability die cut that is the same as the shapes wrapped around the sides. I used two dark blue brads on each of these little square brackety shapes. I then added those layers to the dark blue card base.

Hope you all like it and can understand my directions. If you have questions, email me or leave a comment. If I could make the directions better please let me know what I need to do.

Until next time,

Happy Crafting!

Sabra