Autumnal Birthday

Hi all.  Well Summer is finally over and Autumn has definitely arrived now and the nights are getting quite chilly here.  There are quite a few Autumn challenges around at the moment and one is brand new.  It is CAS Watercolour Challenge being run by Loll Thompson and Bonnie Klass,  and is in addition to  the *CAS Mix Up Challenge which they already run and which this month asks for Stamping+Ghosting+Own Choice which in the case of my card below is either the die cutting or heat embossing.

The Ghosting technique is fairly new to me, and there are several ways of achieving this but I used water, i.e. removing ink by spritzing water on to the stamp and pressing down on to an inked surface.  I covered a snippet of white card with several different colours of Distress Ink, namely Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick and Walnut Stain, using a dry baby wipe as I happened to have one handy.  I then found a maple leaf stamp from a set by Hobby Art called Falling Leaves.  I spritzed it with water and placed it down on the inked card for quite a number of seconds before lifting it away.  This lifts some ink and makes a lovely pattern.  I repeated this randomly.  When I had finished I used a stitched square die, the largest in the set which is about 4" in size.

I found another snippet of white card and stamped two of the leaves using the Walnut Stain DI.  I made sure this was perfectly dry before adding several of the colours mentioned above to watercolour the leaves with, using a waterbrush.  When happy with the look of the leaves, and again when perfectly dry, I pressed them into my Versamark pad to coat them and heat embossed with WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder.  I repeated this again to give them a nice even shiny finish.  When using water based products to colour you should use a permanent ink to stamp with, but I took a chance and although a little of the detail was lost I just readded it with a pencil before heat embossing and it looks fine.

When I had adhered the background and the leaves to the white square base card I added a sentiment stamped with Adirondack Espresso ink.

Thank you for dropping by my blog today.

I am also entering the following challenges:

Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Week 250 where we use up our snippets of card and paper etc.
Addicted to CAS Challenge - Watercolour.
Penny Black and More Challenge - Autumn.
Uniko Studio Challenge - Autumn (no twist though).
Happy Little Stampers October Mixed Media Challenge - Nature.
Happy Little Stampers October Anything Goes with Dies Challenge.
CAS on Sunday - Heat Embossing.
Stamping Sensations October Challenge - Autumn.  (voted winner by DT - so pleased!)
Rubber Dance October Stamp Challenge - Fall (in Love with Autumn).
Casual Fridays Challenge - 158 - 1 in 8.  (I have six leaves whole/partially stamped in the background and two whole leaves as the focal image.
*I am thrilled to have been chosen as one of the Outstanding Designs over at CAS Mix Up.