Warding off the snow

I don't want to go jinxing things by saying that it's been a fairly mild winter so far, so I won't. It's bitterly cold today -- at least by my standards -- but sunny. We got a little bit of snow on Monday (exactly during rush hour, thanks Universe), which was very pretty and just enough, thank you. But 'tis the season, so I'm expecting we'll see a bit of the white stuff before Spring; hopefully I'll get to witness one of my favorite sights: a red cardinal in snow. The current theme at the Dilly Beans Challenge Blog is "Frosty," so I decided to make my own version of that scene, in card form!

December's Silly Dilly Beans Stamp Club freebie was their cute Winter Birdie (thank you Megan!), which I thought would be perfect for the "Paper Piecing" challenge at DRS Designs as well as the Totally Papercrafts "Spots & Stripes" and the Fussy & Fancy "Let It Snow!" challenges. I used the sketch from Repeat Impressions.

I paper-pieced the Winter Birdie digi with 3 papers onto a light blue; I added some details with Copics and then ran the whole piece through my embossing machine. I lightly sanded it to show the white core and create "snow".

For the base, I stamped and heat-embossed the grass and sentiment in jade green and white respectively. I picked up this old rubber Sea Grass stamp by Posh Impressions at a church rummage sale and I think I'm going to have lots of fun with it! I cut around the grass blades so that the image piece would fit behind it.

Stamps: Winter Birdie and Girlie Skellies digital collage sheet by Dilly Beans stamps, Sea Grass stamp by Posh Impressions, sentiment from Build-a-Snowman set

Paper: DCWV, Paper Company

Tools: Zip Dry & tacky glues, Fiskars papercutter, Versamark ink, Marvy heat tool, stamp block, Big Shot, MS detail scissors, Recollections double-sided tape, sandpaper, HP printer & ink

Embellishments: Recollections embossing powders, stash eyelets, Copic markers, stash ribbon, Polar White FlowerSoft