Cold and Snow/ And the World Glistens

December found me still on my journeys away from Maryland. I spent the the entire month with my folks and got to spend time seeing my family. I went shopping with my Mom, went to several musical productions, sang with the church choir, visited both Grandmas in their Nursing homes and had 4 Christmases (that doesn't include the one with Wayne when I got home).

I started my December once I got to Iowa. I manged to have really good timing weather wise. I got there 2 days after and ice storm and before more bad weather the next day. The photo I had chosen for the month seemed so appropriate with ice and snow all around. We had typical Midwest winter weather, snow, ice, and somewhat unusual lots of fog some of it lasting all day long. Although the weather is challenging to live in and travel in it is still pretty. The whole word glistens with ice and snow and hoar frost.

I wanted to use lots of stitching to portray the texture and accentuate the branches. I used Sulky sliver thread in a translucent white the capture the glistening of the light on the ice and snow on the pond. I thought it would be challenging to do hand stitching with this thread but it actually was great. The only slight catch was that if you pulled to tight the thread would break. In the right light the effect is perfect. The snowflakes I found as accents at Michaels. They are just plastic and not a button or bead but with some sliver thread they are invisibly attached.

The photo was so striking that I didn't want to distract from it too much so I kept the beading and accents somewhat minimalistic for me (I tend to be a more is better kind of girl).
The foot prints along the bottom right of the photo where mine as I was the first person who had walked here after the snow. I tried beading them but I lost the fact that they were foot prints and I undid them.

The border I kept fairly simple as well and just used a cord/branch to surround the page. The page has the least amount of beading of any of my pages thus far but the effect was really good for winter when the whole world feels much more stark and bare and yet has a beauty all its own.