Silhouette Tree with Oak Leaves

Hi everyone.  I have a masculine card to show today, another card I have had to make in a bit of a hurry!  I used my distress ink to make a watercolour background, an XCut die for the shape and a tree die which one of my lovely crafting friends sent me and which is seeing its first outing.  You know who you are and thank you as it is so sweet and pretty!  I  have in mind amongst others to enter the CAS Watercolour Challenge and this month's subject is Fall Leaves, and they are celebrating their 1st Birthday so many congratulations to Loll and Bonnie who have made this and the CAS Mix Up Challenge such fun, and there are two lovely prizes up for grabs too.

I found a snippet of white card and at first had in mind to use an ink splat stencil to make some background shapes very close together, applying it with blending foam and spritzing with some water to spread the ink to make an interesting shape, which I did.  Well, this was not very successful as the ink didn't move that much because I think the card was not really watercolour card, bad choice!... so I decided to add ink to my glass mat, spritz and add more of the colours.  I used Distress Inks - Tumbled Glass, Spiced Marmalade and Mowed Lawn.  There was a bit of wrinkling which the photo highlights rather, but in real life it isn't so noticable.

I had already cut the tree from a piece of thickish copy type paper, just to see what it looked like, and this had been sitting on my table for a while.  So instead of wasting it I decided to colour it with Black Soot Distress Ink and when dry coated it with Versamark Ink and used WOW Clear Gloss Embossing Powder, and I did this twice to build up the shine and make it stronger.  I then die cut the XCut Ornate Frame, the largest die in the set.  I decided to flip the topper for added interest and adhered the tree to it.  I then added the sentiment using Black Archival Ink.

I then found another snippet of white card and stamped two oak leaves again using Black Archival Ink and a Hobby Art set called Falling Leaves.  I then coloured with my Distress Inks in Mustard Seed, Mowed Lawn, Walnut Stain, Fired Brick and Black Soot using a waterbrush.  I did make the colours softer by adding quite a bit of water to go with the more subdued colours in the topper.

I finished the card by adding the frame to a white 6" square base card and added the leaves to one side and adhered them with Pinflair Glue Gel. 

About half way through this card I really was wondering if I should just start again, but once I start something I hate to give up and admit defeat so am inclined to battle on...lol.  I think this was worth sticking with.

Before I go I have to say thank you to a new follower called Henry who doesn't seem to have a blog, but if I am wrong and you do, let me know and I will give you a shout out.  

Thank you for dropping by today and I'll be back soon.

I am entering the following challenges:

CAS Watercolour October Challenge and 1st Birthday Celebration - Fall Leaves.
Pixie's Crafty Workshop - Weeks 303/4 where we use up our snippets of paper and card etc.
Dies R Us Challenge - No. 83 Leaves.
Happy Litttle Stampers October Watercolour Challenge - Anything Goes (no twist).
Happy Little Stampers October Anything Goes with Dies Challenge.
Uniko Challenge - No. 43 Autumn/Fall (no twist).