The Fire of the Frost

Hello all!  We've made it to the first of the EAB05 Winter Edition samples, and I thought I'd kick off with a double.  Both of these samples use the longer quotes from the set, but you could easily just use a line or two at a time if you didn't want all the words at once.  One of the two pieces was a CASEing of a card I made over a year ago... it's a rarity around here, as it's basically a Clean and Simple creation.

The other took the same basic idea and added a coat of frosted sparkle.  For the full launch post over at PaperArtsy (here if you missed it) I shared a 20-second snippet of video because it was really the only way to show the full effect of the frosted stamping.  You'll get a look at it later in this post too.

Lots of people have already been asking how the icy sparkle was done, so now's your chance to find out.






Both cards start with really the simplest of backgrounds... just some gesso or white acrylic dabbed onto the craft mat, then spritzed with water and smooshed around with a large brush... and then you simply press some kraft card down onto the mess and lift it away.  If you want you can go in for repeated pressings, or you may be perfectly happy with the first.

I love that it gives a wonderful look of whirling snowstorms, or of a snowy landscape glimpsed through a mist of snowflakes.












For the first card I paired Christina Rossetti's beautiful words with Sara Naumann's solitary bird from ESN18 - simply meant to be.











It's probably my favourite Christmas carol of all (though, as I've said before, for me it has to be the Harold Darke setting - no need to listen now if, like me, you can't handle Christmas this early... these are "winter cards" not Cxxxxxmas ones!).

The bare twigs from the same set add a little vertical dimension to the composition.











This is an absolutely straightforward stamping in Jet Black Archival (another rarity around here), no embossing, no nothing special.  About the quickest thing I've ever made I think!

Oh, some white splatter, of course.  Never forget the white splatter...












I created the same background ready for the glorious Lynne Perrella snowflake woman (that's just what she's called in my head, nowhere else) from LP016.

I think this quote by John Burroughs is extraordinary - so poetic in its multi-sensory sounds and colours and images and temperatures, and from the moment of finding it, the intricacies of the thinking felt as though they would work well with the intricacies of a Lynne Perrella stamp.










To echo the power of those images - the "fire of the frost", the "life of the crystal" (all phrases that you could use by themselves if you don't want to use the quote in its entirety) - I thought I'd push the boat out and go for some sparkle.











I tried a couple of methods on a piece of scrap card.  I had high hopes of the Frosted Crystal embossing powder by Ranger, but it didn't make quite the impact I wanted.  It does look like a sort of icy coating, but it's not really sparkling.  Maybe I overheated it?










So I tried something else.  I stamped her in Jet Black and then used Sticky Embossing Powder over the stamping.

You heat it to melting point (but don't go on too long), and then you can add particles, whether glitter or fluff or mica, depending on your look.  I used Tim's Distress Dry Glitter in Rock Candy (magical stuff which isn't really like real glitter at all), and that was much more like it.










Once I had that worked out, I stamped directly onto my snowy kraft (using the Stamping Platform - fantastic for a detailed image like these Lynne Perrella ones, especially a large stamp like this one - you can always go for another stamping if you don't quite get it all first time), and proceeded with my sparkle addition.













I love that you get a properly thick, crunchy coat of frost...














... but you can still see all the magical detail of the image beneath.














I did the same for the words themselves, which has quite a magical effect too, I think.









Of course none of these photos really shows you the full effect, so here's that snippet of video I promised you.

There's really no other way to catch that sparkle in the light as it moves!








I added a couple of Calico Craft Parts snowflakes, to which I'd given a coat of white gesso and one of matte medium to adhere some more of the Dry Glitter.

And again, once I knew how to get my sparkle, a really quick card to make, and easily repeatable if you're making many cards for sending.











Thanks so much for stopping by today.  I'll be back soon with some more samples - back to Music and Silence for some singing Zinskis I think - but before that there's something brand new to see, which you can catch on Sunday evening.  Until then, have a great weekend everybody.

They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the wonder of it?
Jeanette Winterson

EAB05 The Winter Edition available now from Country View Crafts, That's Crafty, The Artistic Stamper and many more...