Hello Fall

WARNING - SPOILER ALERT

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but summer is over my friends.  It was 5 degrees here this morning.  Boo.  However, with the return of autumn comes the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte (yay!) and warm colours in the trees in my yard.

Thankfully, there are just a few tentative yellow leaves at the bottom of my trees, but it felt inspired to make a fall card anyways.  These colours always remind me of my dear cousin, Amber, so here's to you darling girl.

I began by using my brayer to make a layer of Hello Honey on my cardstock (which started out as Whisper White).  I inked it up and rolled it on, not worrying too much about coverage since I knew I'd be layering a little more.  Next, I added random spots of Tangelo Twist, Cajun Craze, and Real Red.  Once I had enough ink to my liking, I sprayed the piece with some alcohol.  This allows the ink to lift and mingle somewhat.  Using my heat tool I dried the ink.  After that I tried spraying it again, but it seems like the alcohol made the ink really sink into the paper.  I actually wanted the inks to run together way more than this, but I love how it turned out.  The spots where the brayer tapped the paper remind me of leaves.  The final ink step was to distress the edges with a little Soft Suede and Baked Brown Sugar.

To add a little dimension I ran it through my Big Shot with a nice embossing folder then matted it on Soft Suede.  I then used the large oval to cut out my sentiment and looped it around the inked layers with some linen twine.  I like the idea of looping the tread under the sentiment as a way to add another layer rather than behind it and using dimensionals to pop it up.  I didn't want a layer of colour behind the sentiment so this jazzes it up enough to allow me to get away without it.

I love love love this card, but I'm going to keep playing with spraying and inking until I figured out what it was I was trying for.

Selective Brayer

Usually I like to have lots of layers on my cards, and quite a bit of distressing too, so this card was something totally different for me.  I don't use my brayer very much, but I saw this idea with the select inking and wanted to give it a try.

I started out by tearing a couple strips of DSP to make the guide and then glued them to my working surface, then I slid my cardstock underneath them.  For the ink, I covered my brayer in Pool Party and covered the whole strip, then followed the the new Gumball Green one the bottom 2/3, and some Island Indigo up top.  The new ink pads are jucier than heck, so I had to give it a few goes before I got the variation that I wanted (I think I'll go back and try this again with a little more Pool Party showing through).  Also, the Island Indigo is very dark so I rolled off most of the ink before applying it.

Leaving my base in the guide I inked up the foliage stamp from Just Believe, and added it to the coloured strip.  I hardly ever use black and I forgot that it takes a while to dry, so I actually ended up smudging the first few tries before I just left it in there (and still managed to smudge - the butterfly on the right is hiding one).  While I was waiting for it to dry I stamped the big butterfly from the new set Papillon Potpourri in Versamark and heat embossed it with black powder.  Then I coloured it in with Melon Mambo and Pumpkin Pie and punched it out with the coordinating punch (LOVE punches).  the black butterflies are from the Embosslits Beautiful Wings and they're just glued to the base but I used a dimensional to give the main butterfly a little lift.  Finally, Curly Cute made an appearance for the sentiment.  I think this would also make a really nice sympathy card.