A Winter Card

I joined a month-of-the-year card swap at Paper Petal Memories. This meant there were 12 people in the swap, each picking one month of the year to center their card around. Each person makes 12 cards (one for each person in the swap) and after swapping them out, we end up with 12 different cards. My month was January. For some reason I was having a very difficult time getting inspired and really struggled with what to do. This is what I came up with, though I'm not sure how happy I am with it.


The only thing I knew for sure I wanted to do is use purples instead of the traditional blues for a winter card.
I decided to do square cards, which was my first time doing so. One thing I learned - if you are doing heat embossing, do so BEFORE you attach it to the background paper. I had the lighter patterned paper already attached to the background paper when I stamped my sentiment and embossed it. That resulted in a little bit of warping to the paper and it doesn't quite lie flat anymore.
Plus, this particular card (the one I kept for myself) got a little damaged and doesn't look quite as nice as it should!
The stamps I used were from the $1 bin at Michael's. The papers are by Provo Craft and the ribbon is from Michael's. I added a tiny jewel to the center of the snowflake and though you can't really see it, I added a bit of sparkle glaze to the circles at the tips of the snowflake. It is then raised from the rest of the card with foam tape.