Autumn Beauty

I’ve had the rough idea for this card in my head for a few days. I finished work a bit early today so I was finally able to find some time to sit down and work on it. This is one of those cards that the idea really solidified as I worked on it. I definitely enjoyed making this one.

I started with a piece of Tim Holtz Distress Watercolor Paper, which is a very white watercolour paper. I knew I wanted to stamp and heat emboss the large leaf from the Hot Off The Press Leaves stamp set. After working out where I wanted to add the leaf I started thinking more about how I wanted the rest of the design to be. I decided to add a sentiment from Pink and Main’s Doodled Flowers. Using my MISTI I stamped and heat embossed both stamps with gold embossing powder onto the more textured side of the watercolour paper.

I then took my clear Ranger Emboss It Pen (which I got from the October Simon Says Stamp card kit) and added a swirl line between the sentiment and the leaf. It was a little tricky as I couldn’t see what I was drawing. After drawing the initial line in I added more embossing powder, used a paint brush to refine the thickness of the line in places, then heat embossed it. I then drew a few more swirls coming from the main line, and heat embossed them too.

Having completed the heat embossing I moved on to my painting. I used my Gansai Tambi watercolours. After checking the swatch sheet I picked out 30 Cadmium Red, 33 Orange, and 43 Mid Yellow to use. I covered the whole leaf with a wash of water first, then added in the paint. I’m not the best watercolourist, and probably should have started lighter than I did, but it worked out well enough! I concentrated the red towards the bottom left, and the yellow on the top right. I allowed the colours to mix in the middle, and added a little of the yellow to help it along.

After the painting was completed and fully dried I adhered the watercoloured panel flush to an orange card base.

I’m pretty pleased with this card! I really like how the colours turned out, and I do like my doodled addition even if it’s not perfect. I need to work on my watercolouring skills a bit, but even there it didn’t go too badly. Mostly I just need to be more careful – I went over the edge in a couple of places, and I also managed to drip paint on the white area of my panel. That would have been fine if I was planning on adding splatters… I did manage to pick the drips away mostly, so they are barely noticeable. I just have to keep reminding myself that handmade doesn’t have to be perfect!

Love,

Lady Joyful

Challenges included:

Allsorts Challenge Blog – Trees and Leaves

CAS Watercolour Challenge – Fall Leaves

HLS Watercolour Challenge – Anything Goes and Optional: Gold

Less Is More – Hot & Spicy Colours

Uniko Challenge – Autumn