Today it's Sunday and time for this week's new challenge over at The Paper Players- yay! It's the turn of the super-talented Sandy to host this week and she has a timely theme challenge for you to work with:
Trees and leaves - perfect for autumn and fall, with so many colours at this time of year. I'm on a festive roll though, so decided to go for a Christmas card - still with leaves though as opposed to a tree or trees, as you might expect. I have another Feathers and Frost card for you, but this time using the leaves only - take a look:
Here's the low-down on today's card:
No Feathers ... - The Feathers and Frost stamp set features a pair of robins and poinsettia flower as centre pieces for this leaf pattern, but I decided on this card that I wanted the leaves themselves to take centre stage. Don't get me wrong, I love the pair of robins (and have another project that features them lined up for another day) and have featured the flower on this card previously, but for today it's all about the leaves!
A Leaf Triptych - I decided to create a repeating pattern with a triptych of leaves, creating a longer than usual card (my card measures 21cm in length and is 11cm wide) and joining 3 of the leafy squares into a seamless row. I stamped them in my favourite festive green, Shaded Spruce, onto watercolour paper and used an aquapainter to pull some of the outline colour in and give a light wash over each leaf. When this had dried, I them went back in with some extra ink and my aquapainter and added an additional swipe of colour on each leaf. This is a rather labour-intensive way of colouring, but I think it really adds to the loose brushstroke effect of the stamp set.
... But Plenty of Frost - Whilst there's an absence of feathers, my card has plenty of frost - of the sparkly gold kind at least! I used my retired gold Wink of Stella pen to colour the berries in between my green leaves (you could use the new Vegas Gold Shimmer Paint to achieve the same effect) and flicked some across the surface of my card, along with a sprinkling of gold sequins, some loops of gold thread, gold glimmer paper border and finally my sentiment, which I stamped in Versamark and heat embossed in gold on a vellum strip and wrapped it around the centre of my card. Vellum is a great base to add a sentiment to a card where you don't want it to overly obscure the pattern or stamping beneath. It also enables me to link up with the lovely ladies over at Just Add Ink who are challenging us to use vellum on our cards this week - do check them out, they've some great ideas and suggestions on other ways you can use it in your cardmaking too.
I also did a little co-ordinated stamping on the inside of my card (and remembered to photograph it!):
Here is the visual summary of the key products used on today's project for you to pin for easy reference:
You can see all of my Product and 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any.
Before you reach for your ink and papers, check out what our amazing team has created to inspire you this week:
The Paper Players Design Team
Here's a quick recap of our challenge rules:
1. Create a new paper project
2. Upload your creation to your blog with a link back to us and provide a direct link to the post featuring your challenge submission.
3. Please link your card to no more than four challenges, TOTAL.
4. Have FUN!
You can see all of my 'How To' summaries on my 'How To - Tips and Techniques' Pinterest board in case you've missed any.
So what do you think? Can you use leaves as the main focus and decoration on a Christmas card to good effect? I'd be interested to here your thoughts - do leave me a comment below.
Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow with another project. Until then, happy stampin'!
Stampin' Up! Supplies Used: