Sunday 24 September 2017

Seasonally Corrected.

Christmas. New stock keeps arriving and tempting me. For which of course, Shopkeeper Gal has to shoulder the blame. It has nothing to do with weakness or lack of will power or any such nonsense. I have been very caught up in it all though. We've had a couple of lovely sunny autumn days that have let me focus on the present. Then when it all turned to wind and rain again, I had a go at an appropriate card. Which turned into two.


I die cut this scene from some pearlescent paper in my scrap box. I intended merely to sponge some colour through it to create a background for the real/intended card. Turns out I wasn't the usual heavy handed (or 'enthusiastic') with the inking and found myself quite liking the coloured die cut. So as you can see, I glued it to a wood effect card panel and called it a card. Genius, me. Ignore the word 'dreams' underneath...it's packaging tape. I forgot to crop the photo. Well, genius doesn't always extend to everything, does it!

This was my intended version. The background is coloured by sponging Distress Inks through the die cut ( I believe that makes it a stencil). Then I die cut another of the scenes from textured brown stock and glued it into position over the ghostly white trees that the removal of the stencil had created. I'm perfectly sure you know what I did. But explaining it makes me feel very important, as if I blog about crafting or something. The 'lovely' is a Heidi Swapp die. I'm assuming the warm tones of the inks is what allows me to get away with using pink. You'll have to ask a proper artist about colours. my limit is colouring and then gluing, frankly.
Note that this lovely tree scene speaks nothing of the tedium of raking and collecting the fifty kerjillion leaves involved at some point. Yes, I have garden chores that I'm putting off. How could you tell?

10 comments:

Helen said...

I love the trees and I love the colours. I'm putting off chores too but that is easy!

Cara said...

Two stunning cards, definitely worth putting off the gardening duties to make them x

Sue said...

Cards are fab Julia.

Hope you've had a lovely weekend. Sue

Bleubeard and Elizabeth said...

Possibly the others knew how you created these awesome cards, but I was quite grateful for the "tutorial" on how you made them. They are certainly lovely.

I've come to the conclusion that my lawn mower will mulch my gazillion leaves quite nicely and I can save the raking for more impressive artistic endeavors.

misteejay said...

Beautiful cards Julia.
This year I don't have the leaf problem as last year we had to have the trees removed because they were cracking the wall of the garage. However, all this sun & rain recently has the grass and weeds sprouting like nobodies business so the garden is looking a little unloved at the moment.
Toni xx

Cardarian said...

I saw the cards on your desk and I was wondering where you got the die as I think it would be quite useful. Lovely cards!

Neet said...

Please do NOT mention picking up leaves Julia. Our garden gets covered. Quite nice to walk through and rustle with your boots on but oh - the picking and bagging! Unfortunately, even though we have our own slew of trees we get them from a house down the road that is lined with beech trees. We don't have a beech tree in sight but the little blighters (being polite) blow onto our garden for us to pick up.
I notice we have started with the leaves - big dark ones that have obviously been very wet from one of our sycamores.
I love your cards, best place for leaves is on cards and I do like trees like this with no leaves on. Wouldn't know which I would pick as a favourite - like them both equally.
Hugs, Neet xx

Zsuzsa Karoly-Smith said...

Lovely to take a closer look at those cards - I was dying to when they were on your desk on Wed! See you again tomorrow, hopefully!

Lynn Holland said...

Well you need to explain it to me as I haven't a clue about such things and marvel at all that fiddliness and the patience it must take
Lynn x

Cheetarah said...

Gorgeous cards! The top version is my fave! Really love this season, so many wonderful amber and brown color combinations!