Autumn leaves

It's nearly Autumn, my favourite season, so when I saw the beautiful photo inspiration at Just Us Girls this week I thought I'd be in my element.



But do you know, I'm not really happy with this card. Something about it just doesn't work for me - do you think perhaps I've concentrated so much on texture I've lost sight of the overall appearance of the card?

For the background I stamped two different leaves, a maple and a horse chestnut, over kraft card using Versamark ink. I do love the combination of kraft and Versamark! I brushed a very tiny amount of green mica pearl powder (an old discontinued brand) over some areas to give "lowlights" and set it with a spritz of water.

The large leaf panel was stamped with a large background stamp, in Versamark on dark green card, then brushed more generously with copper and gold mica pearl powders and set as before, then edged with copper foil using a Tonertext pen and foils from Foil Play. This was layered onto cream textured card that had also had the edges foiled, using gold foil this time.

The next layer up is cut with a Sizzix labels die then, without removing the die, stamped with a text stamp and the edges lightly sponged with ink.

The leaf on top was stamped onto dark green card using a glue pad, which allowed me to be even more generous with the pearl powder, then cut our and added with 3-D adhesive. Finally I added a few peel offs left over from a sheet that's been hanging around for many years.

I think maybe any one of the elements used separately on a simpler card would have looked good, but combined like this it's All Too Much for me! However it has fitted in nicely with my current penchant for resurrecting old stash and ideas that I haven't used for years.