Good morning and happy weekend to everyone…Well, the calendar says that it’s fall but it sure still feels like summer on the East Coast! I don’t know about you but hands-down – fall is my favorite time of the year. When I simply hear the words “Fall” I automatically think of beautiful leaves, apples, cooler temperatures, and comfort food!

Do you remember back in the spring… Sarah had a paper pumpkin called it’s a Sarah thing! It was one hot paper pumpkin and I sure did stock up on the refills.It was so much fun because she used a technique with clear embossed images and then using watercolor crayons to blend colors together.

In today’s card I am doing something something similar but I’m using ink pads instead of the watered colored pencils today and I will show you how you can stamp the leaves from the Colorful Seasons Bundle to make the fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below you can see the beautiful colors that truly remind you have a spectacular Fall scene. The colors that I used were Cajun Craze, Cherry Cobbler, and Crushed Curry. Today, I did use the watercolor paper as using watercolor paper is essential to have super blending.

Very Vanilla is my card base color as I like the softness of the the very vanilla with the fall leaves.  when I see this card I smile as it truly reminds me of doing projects with my children when they were younger with coloring. Let’s get going!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bet you’re looking at this picture and going YIKES – this looks like a MESS!!!! Hang tight as we all know there sometimes that you need to make a mess to make a beauty 🙂

All I did was stamp the leaf image on watercolor paper and heat set it with clear embossing powder. I do recommend using the embossing buddy to make sure you do not have any stray powder going where you do not want it!

 

Now for the fun… Grab yourself a little cup of water and a paint brush. 

 

1 – Wet the entire area that has been heat embossed with clear water.

2 – Now, dab your paint brush into a little of the ink and simply tap it over the embossed image as shown below. This is where the magic happens as you will see the colors blend together.You will have to just play around with color combinations to get the look that you were going for.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The one color I absolutely adore but you have to be careful with that is the color of yellow.You need to “protect the yellow” as it has a tendency to get muddy and change color if you add too many other colors right next to it.

This is such a fun technique to play around with and just have fun with color. After I have colored my images I then cut them out with  Mr. Big  – super easy and fast.

Hopefully you can tell in the pictures that I have allowed some movement to the top of the leaves. I achieved this look by just simply using glue dots towards the bottom of each leaf to anchor them to my card. This way you can kind of pulled the ends of the leaves to make them look more natural and free-flowing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

By now you know I adore sentiments and simplicity. I could not resist using this sentiment which is from the Dragonfly Dreams stamp set. I invite you to make sure that you remember to blend stamp sets together to achieve a fun look when you are creating a card.

To me it is the sentiment that makes a card special and unique. I felt that the font typeset went well with the feeling of fall and “movement of leaves” cascading down!

If you or anything like me, we tend to use stamps that are super current like from our new catalog… (naturally that makes sense) but please do not forget we have so many good “old faithful’s” that have carried over and they need love as well!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now I ask you,imagine if I did not use the embossing folder with this card. True… It would still look beautiful but the feel from the embossing folder gives it a rustic and natural look. This embossing folder is called the pinewood planks. They sure do add a lot of texture to a card with minimal effort and they’re so affordable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another tip I wanted to point out to you is look how your eye takes the whole card in from the top to the bottom. By creating different focal images throughout the card it allows your eye to naturally go up and down and take it all in.

Also, grouping images in clusters of odd numbers also help to make your eyes naturally take it all in! Are you wondering about the embellishments? These are called “dew drops” that I have in my embellishment stash that I think are fun to add a bit of bling.

 

 

 

 

 

Well….thoughts? I hope I’ve been able to explain to you that using a technique like this is not only fun… It is easy. I think sometimes it is great to be able to pull out an old technique and put it back into use.

I invite you to look at your stamp sets and images to see other Images that leaves and figure out a way to use it with this technique. Here’s an idea… What about taking a large heart and stamping either a geometrical image or possibly some for small flowers/hearts to it and then use this technique. Hmmmmm…..I think I have an idea for a future post!

Enjoy your day, and many thanks for popping in! I hope you have a fabulous day…