not here where I am, thankfully. But whenever I think of cold weather, I remember with a chuckle an email I got from my dear brother, who now lives in North America with his wonderful wife and kids in a place particularly known for its biting cold during the Christmas season. Last year, having newly moved to this place from a busy city in the same part of North America, he sent us an email telling us that the temperature was like -43ºC and he said “Now I know why that Christmas carol went ‘The weather outside is fright’nin’ ‘ ”  😆 I guess when icicles are threatening to hang from the orifices of your body, then that really is frightening!

But this new kit I’ve started is NOT frightening (I hope!) hahaha.

I’ve been wanting to create a nice shimmery effect on paper, inspired by my recent shopping spree (oh those Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales are wicked!!! 😛 ) at Little Dreamer Designs (ahem… among other wonderful places like here, here, here, and here. I loved, absolutely loved, totally loved, Michelle Coleman’s Glow Kit and had to have both the paper pack and the elements… and in the process influenced a few of my friends 😉 to pick up the same pack for themselves as well. If you don’t already have it, it is a MUST. Wonderful wonderful kit! Thank you for creating it, Michelle!

So anyway, I spent around 3 days researching and trying to find out a way to produce that nice shimmery glow digitally (aided at one point by my dear friend Veevs who is the cyber-search expert, especially–but not limited to–when it comes to sales of digital stuff… 😆 ). In the end I was so confused with all the input I had been reading that I just decided to play around with Photoshop and do a bit of this and that here and there… and this is what I came up with. I know it’s far from Michelle’s wonderful kit, but there’s nothing like the feeling of satisfaction derived from just working hard on creating something that you see in your mind and finding, when you’ve translated it onto paper, that it’s not half bad actually. 🙂 (At least for me… hehehe. I hope you like it too!)

So here’s the first set of the Winter Shimmer kit. Zip password is starlight I kind of went way out of bounds in terms of color choice here, because these colors are not the ones I would usually play with, but somehow when I imagine what winter is like, these are the colors that bounce up and down in my mind’s eye. Yeah, I know, I have only seen snowflakes ONCE in my life, when I was about six years old, in Belgium… and I’ve never even touched the Real Thing called snow. On my list of Things to Do Before I Get Too Old: make snowangels in the snow. So don’t be surprised if you ever happen upon a fifty-five year old lady having the time of her life lying on snow and waving her arms and legs about: chances are that would be me. 😆

ETA: Sorry, download link is  no longer available.

{ Click on image for larger view }

This set comes with 3 shimmery papers, one with a night winter scene called Starburst (I wish I could show the entire paper in the preview–as this is my favorite in the set, but I had to put in the other parts of the set in the preview as well). There’s also WhiteLight, a light greyish-white one with snowflakes; and Bliss-ard, which is a mostly-solid, highly textured one. There are 4 glittery snowflakes that measure about 6 inches from end to end which you can upsize or downsize as you wish… and you can use them for accents on your page.

There’s more to come, for sure… I just have to finish a special project that my playground girlfriends and I are producing for our dear Jessica. 😉

I’ll be back soon!

Oh and PS. I was extremely extremely moved and touched by your comments. Actually, I always am, but this time was awesome in a special way, because some people really made an extra effort to leave such inspiring comments. Thank you so much. (Thank you, Tina and Ruth K, for your extra thank-you’s for all those who forgot them). Huge hugs to you all! Your words, the time you take, the effort you make to write down your comments: PRICELESS. Thank you. Seriously.

Alright! Back to the salt mines! Visit soon for the next installment of Winter Shimmer!

Have a happy day, my sweeties!