Chill in the Air

Into October now, and there's definitely an autumnal feel. We've had a few frosty mornings this week and the leaves are beginning to turn. I really do not look forward to the winter, but the wonderful autumn colours are some compensation. And it is in that vein that we introduce our October challenge at Stamping Sensations with the theme of

* * * * * TREES and/or LEAVES and/or AUTUMN * * * * *

We want you to show us the beauty of autumn in all its glorious colours. As usual, to be eligible for our October prize, kindly donated by our lovely sponsors Stamp Addicts, the main element of your project should be stamped and follow the theme.


I needed a lightweight card to post, so decided to make it one layer. I masked the edges of the base card before sponging pigment inks through the stencil and around the edges of the masked area, thus creating a white border to the card, before overstamping with the trees, buzzard and sentiment. Very quick and easy to do! All the stamps and the stencil are by Inkylicious.

We are hoping for lots of autumn colour this month, and I can't wait to see the entries! There is some wonderful inspiration from the Design Team over on the Challenge Blog, so do go and take a look. Good luck everyone!

More Lumiere leaves

As I said yesterday, I have been playing with the wild rose leaf in my image editing programme, changing the colours. Yesterday's cards were quite graphic, clean and simple, but today I felt the need for something more colourful! So for two of the cards I have used background papers from Crafty Individuals and for the third one, one of their Decorative Card Blanks. This time, unlike the ivy leaf card yesterday, I think the patterned papers work with the leaves, not against them. I guess it was just a matter of choosing the right ones. I considered adding some sort of text or sentiment, but decided in the end that none was needed. Which do I prefer, yesterday's or today's? Can't make my mind up! See what you think.

Leaves et Lumiere!

One of the things I did when I was decluttering was to go through the 10+ years' worth of magazines which were taking up so much space, taking out the pages I wanted to keep (putting them in ring binders) and giving away the rest. It took quite some time! Many of the magazines were Stampington publications: Somerset Studio, Take Ten, Stampers' Sampler, etc. In the September/October 2000 issue of Somerset Studio I had marked a project that I really liked the look of, intending one day to use it for inspiration. Well, I finally got round to it!

It was a beautiful framed picture by Leslie Altman. She had painted a gingko leaf with Lumiere paints and photocopied it against black paper. She had then overstamped the copy, matted it with various papers and mounted it into an ornate frame. I liked the way she had enhanced the leaf whilst still allowing its simple beauty to shine through.

No gingko trees in our garden, but I collected a few leaves and painted them with the Lumiere paints. When they were dry I tried scanning them against the black paper, but my scanner didn't pick up the colours very well, so I photographed them instead, with much better results. I printed out the pictures on to a matt photo quality inkjet paper, and then stamped over them with a text stamp (Stampin' Up) using Brilliance Galaxy Gold ink.

The first leaf, an ivy, was painted with turquoise and purple Lumiere paints (although the turquoise has come out more green in the photo) so I used some purple patterned paper to pick up the tones in the leaf, along with some black paper stamped with a Stampington flourish in gold Brilliance ink. However, when it was finished I decided I didn't like it. The background papers seemed to be competing with the leaf for attention. (Leslie's didn't! Maybe I just used the wrong papers. I'd love to put a copy of Leslie's original here, but I don't think copyright will allow it.) Anyway, I kept the next ones clean and simple.

In these three cards the leaves are clearly the focal point, with just a little subtle stamping to complement them, and I think they are much better. The leaf stamps are all by Starving Artistamps, except for the oak leaf, which is from an old foam mounted set for which I long ago lost the labels, unfortunately. The little "Autumn" stamp is by Hero Arts, and the sentiments are Personal Impressions. Here's a closer look at each of them. Click on the photos to get the big picture and see the detail better!

Oak.

Wild rose.

Herb Robert.

So, thanks for looking. What do you think? Are the simple ones better? My favourite is the wild rose. When I had got the photo on the computer I played around with it a bit, changing the colours. I'll post the pics of those when I've made the cards!