I ran the stencil through the Cuttlebug and got a lovely embossed effect, but it was extremely subtle and I wanted to bring out the leaf shapes better. After adding various distress inks and cutting the panel down to size, I was very pleased with the bold color and highlights.
The leaf stamps and dies are from Papertrey's Leave It Be set. Papertrey's dies are closed, and I've decided I really prefer the Hero Arts open dies, which are much easier to line up with stamped images.
The card looked a bit plain so I added some dew drops...my first use of this kind gift from Linda E. LOVE how they turned out!
So now I have my first Thanksgiving card of the year. I usually send about 20 in November, so it's good to start early. And for those of you in the southern hemisphere who are in the fall season now, perhaps this will resonate!
Mercy, grace, peace, and love,
Susan
Supplies
stamps: Papertrey Leave It Be, Hero Arts Color Layering Grateful Leaves
ink: distress inks, Archival coffee
paper: Papertrey natural
accessories: Papertrey dies, twine, dimensionals, Tim Holtz inking tool and leaf stencil
I love autumnal things, and this is beautiful! I'd pick out favorite details, but I like them all—paper, ink, arrangement, embossing, fonts, embellishments, everything.
ReplyDeletePapertrey's closed dies are frustrating to line up. I've found two methods that give decent results with them: cutting the die out of scrap paper first to create a mask, which you can position perfectly around your stamped image and then fit the die into like a puzzle piece; or cutting the die from unstamped cardstock and lining it up with the stamp in a stamp-positioning tool, so that you're stamping directly onto the pre-cut piece. The latter method is better for mass-producing cards, since you can tape your negative down and position your stamp, then just pop blank die-cuts into the negative and stamp away, without having to position everything each time the way you'd need to if you were using the negative to align the die over a stamped image. (I'm pretty sure I learned about the second method on PTI's blog, but the first I can't identify a source for other than stamping osmosis.)