Fall Cards

  Happy Harvest!  I love Fall.  The only thing I don't like about it is that Winter follows and I don't like the cold weather or the bare trees.  Funny how much I enjoy seeing the leaves change color and watching them fall and I even enjoy raking them but I don't like the bare trees all that leaves behind.  I think I enjoy raking leaves is because we had so much fun with it when we were kids.  Not only did we rake huge piles to jump into and crawl and hide in, we raked piles into our play houses and raked roads from my sister's house to mine and then on to our other sister's "house".  It was great fun and filled many a Fall afternoon.  If you remember the picture I posted of  my house last week, the home I grew up in is just through the woods and also had a large yard with lots of trees so the leaves were ample.   

Anyway, these pretty cards are some of the swap cards I got at either the Birmingham or the Louisville Stampin' Up Regional meetings.  These all use the amazing 2-step set, Gently Falling.  I've seen so many beautiful Fall cards made with this set.  They are all great but I wanted to show a close up of 2 of the cards.  This great Fall card from my talented friend, Mary Robinson features a fun and easy technique where you stamp a background for your stamping with one of the clear blocks.  Just ink up the block without a stamp on it and stamp on your cardstock.  It leaves a nice shadow as a base for your focal image.  I love the Fall colors.  I reckon I might have told yall how much I like Fall, right?

The other card uses the masking technique.  Although it takes a little more time to get ready it is a relatively easy technique.  In this sample it requires a bit of cutting but once you have a mask cut out you can use it quite a few times so it is really worth the time.  This card was made by Janice Jones.  She stamped one of the leaves from the Gently Falling set onto a post-it note and cut it out.  Then she placed it on a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock and sponged over it with Soft Suede and Pool Party ink.  The En Frances background stamp could be stamped before or after the sponging, just do it without the mask.  Layering the artwork on Soft Suede and Pool Party cardstock and tying a bit of torn Spice Cake fabric around it finishes off this card very nicely.  Fabric makes a nice, inexpensive bow on your stamping projects and I love that Stampin' Up has fabric to match some of it's Designer Series Paper.  It's great when they introduce products that makes our stamping easier and more versatile.

Swap Cards from Regional Seminar

I still haven't posted any of the cards that I got in the swap at the Regional Stampin' Up Seminar in Chattanooga last month. Here are a few of my favorites.

The first one isn't a card, it's a bookmark. I think it is very cool and will make your page easy to find. These would make a pretty nice gift when you needed just a little something for someone. Or, if you like to give books as gifts, add a nice homemade touch to it with a bookmark specially made for them in place at the beginning of the book. Of course, it would come in handy to mark the page of the catalog with the stamp set you just HAVE to have next!

These four cards all have fall colors. The top left with the punched flowers was made by Jacqueline Price from Knoxville, TN. The Embrace Life card was made by Kriste Millington, I love how she used the baby wipe technique to color the leaves, very cool. The friend to friend card was made by Lora Lee Braswell of Montgomery, AL and the pumpkin card was made by Amy Ord. All are beautiful cards.

Oh man, it may be nearly 11PM but I feel a quick tutorial coming on. The baby wipe technique is a fast and easy way to add lots of color to your stamps with very little effort. You just need a few reinkers and a baby wipe.

Drip several drops of each color onto a folded baby wipe. You might want to put the wipe on a paper plate to protect your table because the ink will soak all the way through. The drops will bleed together pretty quickly.

Ink up your stamp on the baby wipe just like you would on a stamp pad. The technique looks really nice on the script stamp from the Charmingly Yours set but look how great it looks on Circle Circus. I think my favorite that I stamped tonight is the pheasant from the Autumn Days stamp. I love that you can get all that color from dripping a few drops of reinker instead of opening 4 different ink pads and sponging the color onto the stamp over and over.

You can get over 50 inkings from your baby wipe ink pad. Of course, the last ones will be a more muted color but this "ink pad" will stamp a lot! What a great tip if you are doing a swap or working on lots of Christmas cards. I used Pumpkin Pie, Elegant Eggplant, Garden Green and Brilliant Blue. Try a different combination and see what it looks like.

I used fall colors but wouldn't Christmas colors look great and then think of the soft colors for the spring projects that I'm sure are just around the corner. Can you tell I'm ready for winter to be over and it isn't even here yet!