A Colourful Stroll Through Shimmer Forest

Today I spent some alone time walking through Shimmer Forest. As the snow softly fell, landing on my heavy winter cloak, I admired the delicate pearly flake trees where the snow fairies were known to make their home. The fresh snow crunched underneath my boots of +70 agility as I moved silently through the forest. Against the snowy white backdrop, the different coloured trees created a beautiful pearlescent rainbow, and it wasn’t hard to see why the snow fairies chose to live here.

Hold onto your potion satchels - there’s a lot to show here. I made this card set by first stamping all the white pieces of card stock with the tree from the Unity “Warmth and Winter Wishes” itty bitty and heat embossing it. I then created a couple masks and proceeded to colour the background and tree using Distress Inks and a blending tool (choosing colours based on the challenges I was entering).

After the backgrounds and trees were coloured, I sprayed some Perfect Pearls mist onto my craft mat and using a paintbrush, flicked it onto the background for a snowy look. I also “painted” the inside of each tree with it as well for some added shimmery exp points. The sentiment on this particular card came from the My Pink Stamper "Biggie Christmas Sentiments" set.

This particular card will be entered into the following challenges:

Divas By Design: Use Some Red

Speedy Fox and Friends Challenge #187: Green Christmas

I created the top border with a snowflake edge punch and, not wanting to waste anything, glued the punched out snowflakes around the trees, earning me +55 completionist exp points. The sentiment on this card is from the My Pink Stamper "Christmas Wishes" set.

The inside are all the same (so I won't bore you with pictures of each one), but match the outside of the card. The shape was cut with Art Philosophy, using the same paper as the top border.

The snowy hills were cut using the Give a Hoot cartridge and some shimmery white paper. The sentiment on this card is from the same set as the tree - Unity's "Warmth and Winter Wishes".

This particular card will be entered into the following challenges:

Pile It On Challenge #47: Non-Traditional Christmas

Creative Craft Challenges2 #24: Non Traditional Christmas Colours

Crafty Sentiments Designs Challenge: Anything Goes

The envelope for each card was stamped with a snowflake stamp using the same colour of Distress Ink that the tree was inked with. I'm not sure how I feel about this colour combination, but I wanted them to all be really different and I only have so many Distress Inks. This sentiment is from the Unity "Ornamental Season" itty bitty.

You really have to catch it in the right light to see the Perfect Pearls.

The final touch was three gems which I stuck on each tree for even more Christmas bling. The sentiment on this card was stamped using the Echo Park "Holly Jolly Christmas" set.

This card set will be entered into the following challenges:

CHNC Challenge Extra For November

Christmas Cards All Year ‘Round November Challenge: Winter Wonderland

Sentimental Sundays Challenge #182: Winter Wonderland

There She Goes Challenge #235: Christmas Card Sets

Friends Of SpeedyTV Challenge #100: Anything Goes

Simon Says Stamps Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

Challenges 4 Everybody #34: Anything Goes

Simply Create Too Challenge #51: Snow

The Corrosive Challenge #188: Happy Holidays

Little Scrap Pieces Fun Friday Linky Party
Allsorts Challenge #234: Bring on the Bling

Cute Card Thursday: Anything Goes

Christmas Stampin’ All Year Long: Christmas Gift Set (I hope it’s okay there are more than 3 cards)

Then...as a total experiment, I created this card box following the tutorial I found on the Lawn Fawn blog. I only have diamond shaped dies, so my window was a diamond instead of a rectangle. I just used some clear plastic that was the packaging from a set of clear stamps. 

I did run into a few issues (buuuuuuut this was intended as a “test box”)

1) I will not use paper from the DCWV “Shimmer Stack” again. I chose it because I don’t have very much patterned paper that has stuff on both sides, and it's really thick, which I thought would be good for a box, but it looks like crap when you fold it. The edges all crack and you can see the white core. Blech. That got me -77 presentation points.

2) As you can see by the bottom mangled reinforcement, I had some issues with that. I don’t really know what the best adhesive to use is to get the “start” of the twine stuck in there. I tried my liquid Scotch white glue, but it didn’t hold. Then I got the great idea to use hot glue, but I managed to glue down the reinforcement making it almost impossible to wrap the twine around. Siiiiiiiiigh. I peeled it off as best I could, and was left with this mangled mess that barely works.

Ah well...lesson learned. My next one will be better.

After all the chaos surrounding the Winter Festival preparations, it was nice to decompress a little amongst the beauty of Shimmer Forest. Unfortunately, I did run into a couple of rogue ice-storm bandits, but being the prepared guildy that I am, was able to dispense of them quickly with a few well aimed arrows. Weapons - never leave home without ‘em.

~ Guild Master Crystal ~

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