Fall leaves

I made this birthday card for my dear FIL, Larry.  I've been wanting to try this technique for a while.  I think it's called shadow block stamping.  I inked an acrylic block with Crumb Cake and stamped it onto Naturals Ivory cardstock.  I masked the edges with Post-It notes and stamped the leaves from French Foliage in More Mustard, Cajun Craze and Cherry Cobbler.  I added Crumb Cake water drops and the sentiment in Cherry Cobbler.  The cardbase is Cajun Craze.

Happy stamping!

Sympathy card

Unfortunately, I needed a sympathy card for a co-worker.  Her mom passed away on Valentine's Day.  (That brought back memories of my dad's death 10 1/2 years ago, and Ray's mom died 13 years ago as well.)

My go-to set for sympathy cards is Lovely as a Tree.  I colored the image with watercolor crayons (Early Espresso, Old Olive, Riding Hood Red, More Mustard and Pumpkin Pie), spritzed the stamp with water and stamped it on watercolor paper.  It didn't turn out quite right, so I spritzed a little more and stamped again.  It made a bit of a double image, but I think it turned out pretty well.   I added more Old Olive for the ground.

The cardbase is Crumb Cake stamped with images from French Foliage.  The ribbon (Riding Hood Red taffeta) and sentiment (Fundamental Phrases) are both retired.

Happy stamping!

Fall leaves

This week's CAS challenge on SCS was to use leaves.  I just got French Foliage, so that was perfect timing!  At first I was thinking about doing a collage type card or doing clear block stamping, but neither of those ideas came together for me.  (I'm a make-the-card-in-my-head-first stamper.  I'd love to be able to fly by the seat of my pants, but that just never works out for me!)

Finally, I thought of stamping the leaves across the bottom of the card in a border.  Then I decided to emboss them in gold and cut around them on the bottom.  I'm so pleased with how it came out!  (I was going to bleach inside them and color with markers but decided to leave well enough alone.)

I added some water drops in Versamark, Cherry Cobbler seam binding ribbon and a sentiment from Happy Greetings.  I punched it out with the decorative label punch then pushed the edges into the Versamark pad and embossed with gold EP.

Happy stamping!