Things are a little chilly at Heart2Heart...

This week's challenge at the Heart2Heart blog is all about "cold".  Whatever that word means to you - ice & snow? cool colours? a glass of cold milk?  Since it's been snowy & blowy around here lately, I went with a snowflake theme, and used some fairly cool colours.  I decided to learn a little something new, so I learned how to do the emerging colour technique (and I learned a lot!).  I'm also keeping up with my promise to make 5 Christmas tags each month throughout the year, so that I end up with a nice stack of tags ready to go next Nov/Dec.  I'll post my little group of tags first, and then I'll show you each of the steps I took to make my background paper.  They are quite sparkly in person, but of course that doesn't show up in the photo!

Stamp sets are Snow Flurries, Simple Memories & Just for the Holidays; Cardstock is Gypsy, Spring Iris & White Daisy; Inks are Gypsy, Cotton Candy, Lilac Mist & Spring Iris; Lilac Mist & Pink Carnation Organdy & Baby Pink Gingham ribbons; Snowflake buttons - all CTMH;  Clear embossing powder; Stickles.

Using some glossy paper that I had on hand, I stamped one of the medallion images all over in Lilac Mist.

I filled in the empty spaces with a small snowflake in gypsy, and a tiny one in cotton candy.

Then using Versamark Ink, I stamped a fairly solid, large snowflake image all over the sheet of paper, and clear embossed them.

Now comes the fun part, where the white snowflakes appear.  Using Spring Iris ink, I sponged over the entire background, which filled in all of the white spaces, but anywhere that I clear embossed a snowflake - remained white, and shows some of the original snowflake images on the base.  In the picture at the right, you can see that I've sponged the right half of the sheet, showing how the snowflakes emerge.

Here's the finished product.  What did I learn?  That I liked a sporadically sponged background better, because more of the background snowflakes showed through.  I learned that clear embossing makes some colours go funky (pink especially!), and that it's hard to get a sharply stamped image on glossy paper.

Don't forget that you have until next Sunday to be entered into the random drawing for a prize pack from our two sponsors!  So head on over to the H2H blog and see what the our guest designer Aaron Brown, and the rest of the design team have made to inspire you...