Autumn Watercolor Leaves

Happy fall, crafters! This and spring are my favorite seasons – you can literally see the passage of time, the changing of seasons, and even more important: finally the oppressive summer heat is gone!

Of course, one of the most wonderful side effects of warm days and cold nights are the colorful leaves on the trees and strewn across grassy plains. And even though I was afraid I was going to end up with a terrible mess, I decided to whip out my watercolors and the beautiful Hero Arts Autumn stamp set for a fall card.

I inked up each stamp with numerous different distress inks. I made sure to only combine colors which would blend pleasantly with each other and not result in brown puddles of color. With a very fine brush – I'd recommend a #1 or #2 – I added some water close to the outer border of the leaves and then touched the tip of the brush against the stamped line and dragged the color out. By wetting the area close to the leaf first, the colors blended out super smoothly.

After I was done, I loaded up my brush with some gold watercolor from Kuretake and flicked against the brush to produce those gold splatters. The frame was cut from the same watercolor card stock with the Sunshine die by Wplus9 and mounted with some foam tape – after I had adhered vellum with the heat embossed sentiment to the backside of the frame.

And of course as a finishing touch, I added a few sequins in fall colors – the sequins I used are not from the shop, but I've found some similar colors for you and linked to them below.

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you enjoyed the project and have a wonderful fall day, wherever you are!

Autumn	Sunshine Layers Die	VersaMark Watermark Ink	Hero Arts Copper Embossing Powder
N&T Lime Satin Sequins	N&T Festive Fall Sequin Mix	N&T Gold Metallic Sequins

InLinkz.com

Fall is here!

Hello fellow crafters! I don't know about you, but I love love love fall. The oppressing heat finally goes away, the leaves turn to all kinds of colors, the grapes are ripe in the vineyards and beg to be … borrowed ;)

The season has so many joyful aspects, it's no surprise there are a ton of products in the store that let you celebrate it (and not just Thanksgiving). Today, I dug out my trusty Lawn Fawn Stitched Leaves dies, which are finally back in stock again, and inked them with some Distress Ink.

By applying first a light shade of color, and then adding a darker shade of the same color family to the edges of the leaves, you can create a wonderful realistic effect. And the stitching on the leaves – swoon! For the stitching to come out well, I found that using heavier paper does the trick: there's simply more for the dies to sink into and leave that impression.

I also used heavy watercolor paper (almost like card stock) for the entire card. It has a wonderful texture that enhances the leaves and the overall "natural" look that I was going for. You can also see that on the stitched border I have around my front panel, which was cut with the Mama Elephant Basic Set Creative Cuts.

The background of my card was stamped with a few tiny images – I actually used a stamp set from a company that's not in the store, but Lawn Fawn has just released two stamp sets which allow you to achieve the same effect: Thank You Tags and Sweater Weather. They have tiny leaves, nuts, and even a pumpkin which are perfect for this season!

The sentiment was cut with Wplus9's Hand Lettered Hello die from adhesive wood veneer sheets – they come in a pack of ten and you can pick the color that goes best with your card. For mine, I choose one of the darker colors to make the word stand out more. And the texture, oh this beautiful texture…

To finish the card off, I added some sequins in matching fall colors – I know, not very "natural", but a girl needs her bling.

I hope you enjoyed today's card and I hope you have a beautiful fall weekend!

Chase Your Dreams

Hello fellow crafters!

For today's card I wanted something bright and cheerful. Also, I haven't played with my Newton's Nook stamps nearly enough, so they had to be thrown in the mix.

I started by coloring the super cute cat with my Copics, then added clear Wink Of Stella to the balloon to give it some sparkle. It's also easy to fuzzy cut these stamps; if you leave a white border, it goes rather fast. For the background I used the Landscape Trio dies by Mama Elephant. Who doesn't love stitched borders? Some careful sponging with Distress Ink and voilà - a sky!

Hint: I cut the same scalloped rectangle shape that the front panel is in from a piece of thin copy paper and then glued the cut up cloud panel on that paper, then adhered that to the card front. I didn't want to start puzzling the clouds together on the card itself because I was worried I might not get the alignment right (knowing myself, it would have been catastrophic) so I used that little trick.

As a sentiment, I picked one of the beautiful sayings from Altenew. I wanted it to dangle from the cat's balloon, but it was too big. I simply masked off the part I didn't need with a post it, stamped the first part onto the tag and the other part inside. The Wplus9 Timeless Tags 2 fit perfectly here. Some Judikins Iridescent embossing powder on top of the Versafine pigment ink and - sparkle!

The other half of the sentiment was stamped inside of the card. I thought that would be fun for the recipient: super funny card front and a very encouraging sentiment once opened up. Just a cute fit with the cat hanging on to the balloon, don't you think? :)

I mounted the little cat with foam squares to add dimension, fiddled a really long time with the twine to make it look good and spent ages to "properly" sprinkle my sequins across the card. I never get the "random" placement right the first time and rearrange my elements to make them look great. Not sure I always succeed, but it's fun :)

Thanks for stopping by!