Autumn Grove

As I mentioned last week; I’m a seasonal stamper which shows in today’s card. I’ve included some inspiration pics taken on a walk last weekend not far from where I live.

I stamped the PB ‘birches’ first in nocturne ink on hot pressed watercolour paper then embossed them in clear. I masked them with tape then, stamped PB ‘winter’s forest’ in Papertrey ‘cocoa bean’ and ‘dark chocolate’ ink then, while still in the stamp positioner stamped again with versamark ink so I could emboss in clear powder.

With all the trees embossed I started painting dabs of autumn toned inks around the trees and on the forest floor. The inks are listed below. Once I had the look of autumn leaves around the branches and scattered on the ground I used a white gel pen to draw back in the little birch branches I had accidentally painted over.

I stamped words from PB ‘family sentiments’ and cut them out with a speech balloon die which was exactly the right size. I matted the whole panel in brown then popped up the sentiment on a couple of pieces of cardstock.

The colours are lovely around here right now and there are still plenty of leaves on the trees. We had an enormous tree removed from our yard earlier in spring so it will be interesting to see if the leaf collecting is a little easier this year. We still have four big trees plus others over the fence daring to drop their leaves in our yard too!

Supplies


Winter’s forest

I have new tree stamp to introduce to you today. You know how I feel about tree stamps. I kept the technique quite straightforward for this card but I’m looking forward to trying a few more of my favourite mediums ie. distress stains, inks and markers, memento inks and my new favourite for photo paper – stazon. On this sunlit panel I used versafine onyx black with a clear embossing powder. Embossing the image first made it possible to keep all the trees are dark silhouettes when I painted the sunset behind. I used distress stains and a wet on wet technique to blend yellow into pink then blue. I kept the foreground white for snow then painted some shadows loosely on the watercolour paper.

The stamp is called ‘winter’s forest’ but I know it will be just as handy as spring, summer and autumn’s forest! I had a very relaxing time away last week and enjoyed painting a few pages from Kristy Rice’s Summer Cutting Garden watercoloring book. None of the pages are quite finished but I plan to share them with you soon.

Supplies:

Stamps: winter’s forest (Penny Black)
Inks: broken china, scattered straw, worn lipstick distress stains (Ranger) versafine onyx black (Tsukineko)
Cardstock: hot pressed watercolour paper, aqua cardstock
Also: clear embossing powder