I found a great stencil by Carta Bella called Hello Autumn which creates a beautiful, colorful fall background. This is the time of year that I think about all the wonderful people in my life and want to send them cards letting them know who grateful I am they are part of my life. I decided to use this background stencil to create those cards.
I ink blended the background onto Neenah Classic Crest 80# Solar White Cardstock using some pretty fall colored inks from Gina K. Designs. Once that was done I cut down the panel using a stitched rectangle and matted it with green cardstock.
I pulled out some leaf dies and cut several from white cardstock and link blended them to match the colors used in the background. I bundled them together, added a gold and cream baker’s twine bow and adhered them to the lower left corner of the card.
For a sentiment I stamped Gina K. Designs “Thankful” from her Stitched Leaves stamp set and cut it out using the coordinating shadow die and adhered it to the top of the card. A secondary greeting was stamp on to ivory cardstock and cut with a sentiment label and adhered with Simon Says Stamp Big Mama Foam Tape. The first attempt is shown below.
For the second attempt I decided to try and mute the background by adding a layer of vellum. I also pulled out a larger maple leaf for the base of the leaf cluster, but I felt the vellum muted the pretty background too much.
For the third attempt I pulled out a larger maple leaf die and used it for the base of the leaf cluster. The sentiment was stamped on orange cardstock with gold and people I showed it to thought the sentiment was hard to see.
With the fourth attempt I finally got a card that I liked all the elements and made eight more cards to send to family and friends.
