To Everything There is a Season

I was stunned and ecstatic that Lys chose my "Card Gone Haiku" piece for her Top Talent in the Our Creative Corner Topsy Turvy challenge!  Unusually for me, I knew immediately what theme I wanted - something with trees and the sky, as we have been experiencing some stunning stormy skies, brilliant blue skies, and intense winter skies recently.  I absolutely love looking at the tree branches against those gorgeous backdrops!   I muddled about what exactly to do with this inspiration, and had thought I might make a little accordion book where each page was a season, with perhaps a quote on the opposite leaf.  But that bordered very closely to the second Wanderlust project, and I didn't want to chance that type of duplication, however innocent.  Well, ok,  it is also because I readily tire of doing the same thing over again, and do want to participate in Kate Crane's great project..... so began looking for something else, lol!



One of the things I love most about fall and winter is the cosy feeling inside in the evening with candlelight.... I rarely use the real thing for fear that my ever-curious cat will cause disaster in her perpetual quest for a personal best in entertainment experiences.  Instead I have some lovely strings of little white lights around the window, that I leave up all year - they make me happy!  Another image that has been in my mind is the candles I have created in my art recently, here and here, to which others resonated as well in the comments.  And so, in the lovely ways of the interior mind, I came up with the idea of a small vintage candle thingy - not really  holder but a casement around a candle, with images of trees against the sky in all four seasons.

Because I wanted a vintage look, I knew I wanted to use the Cabinet Card steel rule die, and hoped that the corresponding mini Mover and Shaper Cabinet insert would accommodate the Impression Obsession background stamp I  had in mind - and hooray, it did!!  I made my frames from cereal-box weight chipboard for sturdiness, and for the same reason cut an inside and and outside frame, between which I would sandwich my windows.

I thought about using acetate for the windows, but wasn't sure my ability to get color where I wanted with alcohol inks was up to par for this, so went with fairly thin white cardstock, so I could color them with Distress Inks.  Above you see on the right top my pattern for trimming a scant amount from the cardstock windows so no white would show once they were placed between the inside and outside frames.

Now - what about those frames?  I settled on a vintage silver look.  I toyed with the idea of embossing foil tape and grunging it up with some black ink, but given the thin dimension of the frame once the insert was cut out, I decided instead to use a detailed background stamp, using Versamark ink and detailed silver embossing powder. So first I painted them with black acrylic paint on all sides and edges.

  Then I stamped and heat embossed - I like how it came out.

Next, to the windows!  I took my mini Distress Ink pads, and chose some colors for each season.  Then I swiped them on my craft sheet (and ps, Santa was kind - I do have a new cover-the-whole-table craft sheet - just have yet to put it on, lol!)  As in a prior "sky" project, I did not smoosh the windows around, but just laid them down in the water-spritzed ink and lifted up - I wanted the colors to pretty much stay where they were.

For the winter sky, I used a tiny bit of Distress Micro Glaze to preserve some white in the "clouds", before laying down into a blend of Hickory Smoke and Pumice Stone Distress Inks.

Elsewhere, I simply laid the cardstock down into the ink, and once up and dry, flicked with a bit of water for additional interest.

 Here, you can see all four seasons.

 And here they are stamped, in Wendy Vecchi's Potting Soil Archival Ink, one of my favorites!

And framed:

All that is left is to put them together, with strong double sided tape, although I left the protective covering on in the inside....

 And then add some battery-operated tea lights!

 Here are some details of each window, when lit up from within.

Thank you so much for stopping by, and please leave a comment if you've time.  I love reading them and hearing from you!! xxx Lynn