Autumn Wishes
Good day, fellow crafters. As the leaves turn to vibrant shades of red and gold, and the air becomes crisp, it's the perfect time to send warm wishes to your loved ones. I have been working on a lot of cards with this theme recently and I wanted to showcase another one for you here today. Since Autumn's arrival brings with it a sense of nostalgia and a longing for connection, its an ideal season for heartfelt greetings. My design goal was to create a visual and emotional representation of the cozy moments spent with family and friends, sipping warm cider by the fire, or taking leisurely walks through the rustling leaves. I hope you enjoy.
To create this card I first began by looking through my patterned paper collections to see what I had that was related to the fall season for inspiration. Once I had found this lovely leaf-covered background paper I just knew this was the one. To further enhance the card and assist in bringing that sense of nostalgia I mentioned earlier into the card, I decided that I would also include some textured paper that reminded me of the materials used in some of my favorite winter clothes.
With these papers in hand and a layout sketch idea from the Freshly Made Sketches Challenge Blog, I set to work. The first step was to trim my background paper down to its final dimensions and then using double-sided tape adhere it to a pre-cut and folded Kraft-colored A2 card base. I chose to do this first because I was using a 12x12 sheet of patterned paper and I wanted to be sure that I could position the leaves that I liked the best onto the card before I added the rest of the details. Once that was done I trimmed and adhered my red horizontal band. I next used a Spellbinders Circle die set to cut out the circle for my focal image and adhered it into place. The next step was to use Newton’s Nook Design’s Autumn Leaves stamp set, featured left, to stamp my sentiment with black ink and then cut it out using one of Momenta’s sentiment tag dies. To give the design some visual appeal I then applied some foam tape and adhered the sentiment to the card background.
The next part of the card was my favorite, adding the sparkle! To do this I took a piece of white cardstock and used Distress Mica Stain in the colors featured on the left. I made sure to do this in my splat box because this product lives up to the stain moniker. Once I got this incredible-looking color made on my paper, I sprayed it with some fixative and used my heat tool to speed up the drying time. After that, I picked my favorite leaf stamp, again from Newton’s Nook set, applied clear embossing ink, and then stamped the image onto the newly colored paper. Next, I applied gold embossing powder and set it with my heat tool. After it had cooled completely I fussy cut around the leaf and then mounted it to the circle focal point of the card I added earlier. I provided an enlarged image of the finished leaf in the gallery below.
