Welcome to Fall

I don't know about you, but I love fall!  It is my favorite season - I love the cooler weather, the colorful leaves, pumpkins, (on porches and in pies), grasses going to seed and sending their plumes high into the air and the smell.  Growing up as the leaves began their beautiful change in color it also meant that we would soon be jumping into piles of them, scattering the work of our fathers!  And soon the air would  be filled with the smell of burning leaves.   Of course, I live in south Texas now and have for 35 years, so the first day of fall doesn't mean cooler weather and I've noticed that many of our trees don't change color until November or even December, but my memories are so great that I can still smell the fall air and picture those beautiful trees.

In the excitement of fall I made this card out of some scraps that were laying on my work table.  I will be doing a class next week on embossing, so I added that to my leaves and acorn and we'll probably make this or a similar card as one of our make and takes.  I used one of my favorite stamp sets - Autumn Splendor and Of the Earth, a recently retired Hostess set.  Remember, if you want to make this card any small greeting will work nicely, if you don't have this one.

Card base is Poppy Parade, a new in color for 2010-2012.  The picture doesn't do this color justice!  It is beautiful.  I also used  Kraft, Soft Suede and Very Vanilla.  I came up with this color combo because the papers were on my table.  I'm not sure I would have pulled them out of my paper racks and used them.together -  I think I needed this random matching!

I sponged the edges of all of the top pieces with Soft Suede and distressed the edges on the Crumb Cake (kraft) and the Soft Suede.  I stamped the leaf stamp as a background on the Soft Suede piece, stamping off before I stamped some of them to have the overlapping leaves in different shades.  Then I stamped the leaf into the soft suede and then on my Versamark pad and stamped it on the background paper I had just made.  I used clear embossing powder.  I heated it and then added a little more powder.  Next I went over part of the embossed area with a Versamark pen and added more powder.  So some parts of the leaves would be darker and stand up more than others.  I took the second shot so you can see how the embossing is different on the leaves - not just one smooth coat, but has some dimension.  For the adorable acorns, I used the Versamark pad and  embossed them.  I then used my Versamark pen and filled in the bottom, leaving a small edge so it gave depth and embossed.  I did this about three times to give it a thick embossing.   I cut them out with my little snips and glued them to paper with snail.  I stamped the wonderful quote, darkened the edges of the paper, again with soft suede and my sponge.   I did place the layer of crumb cake on with dimensionals, but I used snail for all of the other layers.

Now this card is heading to my cousin in Canada.  She's probably not as excited about fall as I am, it's already dropping into the 30's there, but hopefully she will enjoy the card and warm wishes.

See you again soon!