DIY Painted Harvest Thank You Card

One of the joys of blogging is the blessing of friendship. Linda from the blog Paper Seedlings is a bright light and her artistic greeting cards are so beautiful. Linda has a Fine Arts degree and shares her beautiful creations regularly on her blog. She sent me one of her lovely cards and I kept it on display for a long time. It is now carefully tucked away in my memories box. Thank you again, Linda.

Thank you so much, Katherine, for inviting me to do a guest post on your blog, Katherine’s Corner. I wanted the Thank you card I created for your blog to be as elegant as possible – just like you, Katherine!

I had a vision in mind, but no real details. So, this is my thought process while creating a card, whether the “thought” was used, or just part of my trial and error when creating an original card, I’m sharing it with you and I hope you can learn something from me today.

First I chose a color palette. (I should note here that almost all the products that I’ve used in my card are Stampin’ Up! Being a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator, that is what I typically use.) So, in this case, I chose a 4” x 5 ¼” piece of Crumb Cake cardstock to begin with. No photo needed its a light brown color.

Since I’m creating an emboss resist card, I carefully rubbed my Embossing Buddy, an antistatic tool, over the entire piece of cardstock. Doing this will prevent excess embossing powder from sticking where you don’t want it. I inked up the more detailed sunflower stamp from the Painted Harvest set with VersaMark ink. Starting near the center of the cardstock, I stamped my first flower, followed by three more nearly touching to surround the first one.

Because VersaMark stamping is difficult to see, for the placement of subsequent flowers, I chose to emboss four flowers first. I sifted gold embossing powder over the stamped flowers. I then used my heat tool to melt the embossing powder. When heating embossing powder, move the heat tool constantly so it doesn’t scorch any one spot, keeping it a couple of inches from what you’re embossing. The heating process is finished when the entire stamped area is shiny with no powdery residue in evidence.

I stamped more flowers, almost touching, around the first four, then heat embossed the new additions.

After embossing I needed to do a little edge work to make it look like a cohesive piece. I stamped more of the flowers along the little spaces at the edges. Once again I used the heat tool to emboss.

My original vision was finished but I didn’t like the open areas in the center of the flowers. The flower center that comes with this stamp set almost completely fills in the center. That would make the flowers too solid looking. So, I searched through my stamp sets for something a bit smaller.

I found it in the Waterfront stamp set. I used the sun from that set for the centers of my flowers. Below, I have both circles to compare the sizes. I used the smaller sun from the Waterfront set.

I was so delighted that I went the sun route because the result was exactly as I imagined.

The next step was to start the resist process. I used a stamping sponge and Soft Suede ink and applied it lightly over all the embossed flowers.

Then I used a sponge and Early Espresso ink to add a darker color to just the edges.

Yes! I was happy with that background, so I set it aside for now.

I had pictured a traditional golden sunflower as the main focal point. The flower consists of two stamps – one, a more blobby flower, the other, a little more detail. I chose to do the first layer in Daffodil Delight ink, followed by the more detailed top stamp in Crushed Curry ink. I stamped the real center of the flower that came with the set in Soft Suede, adding the little spots in Early Espresso.

The finished flower was very pretty, so I went ahead and fussy cut the flower (I’m the fussy cutter).

I knew I wanted to use the Tin Tile 3D embossing folder on a gold metallic cardstock to add to the card’s elegance. After dry embossing, I laid the fussy cut sunflower on top of it. That’s what I do, I just lay things together to see how it’s looking.

When I laid the sunflower on top of the tin tile piece, the colors of the flowers were almost lost on the gold embossing.

I decided to use alternate fall colors and stamped the flower again in Pumpkin Pie and Cajun Craze, with the Cajun Craze supplying the detail for the flower. I followed up with the two shades of brown for the center.

After fussy cutting this second flower, I held it against the gold embossed square and loved what I saw.

To continue with the newly added Cajun Craze, I surrounded the gold embossed square with a narrow mat of Cajun Craze cardstock ( rust color). Lovely.

It used to make me feel quite intimidated when even thinking about adding a metallic cord or thread haphazardly around an object. To make the process easier, I came up with a way of doing it that works well for me.

I wanted to add some gold cord to the back of the rusty flower, so I turned it upside down and ran a few rows of Snail Adhesive across the turned over flower. As I made each loop of the cord, I caught a portion of it on the tape. The tape holds the cord in place while you are working on it, but it’s still easy to adjust the placement if needed.

To keep with the simple elegance, I die cut a “thanks” from the same gold metallic cardstock.

I thought it would be nice to have my card base also be Cajun Craze to echo the mat around the gold embossed piece. So I laid this new combo out to give it a test try. Yes.

The flower deserved a little more color, so I used the two-step leaf stamp that came in the Painted Harvest set to stamp a leaf in Pear Pizzazz and Old Olive. I used the Leaf punch to cut the leaf out.

After adding the leaf to the flower, I added Stampin’ Dimensionals to the back of the flower piece, which included the looped gold cord and the leaf and adhered it to the lower right corner of the gold embossed piece.

I decided not to add the gold cord bow. I thought it looked nice without it, as did the rest of the combo I’d laid out. I put the rest of the card together. By simply gluing it all in place with liquid white glue.

The card is lovely Linda, and the colors are just right for the season too. Thank you for sharing your creative process with us.

Are you ready to try your hand at a DIY Painted Harvest Thank You card?

Please contact Linda HERE regarding any questions you may have or to learn more about Stampin’ Up!

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a Rafflecopter giveaway “May the Lord bless you and keep you; may He let His grace shine upon you and be gracious to you; may the Lord turn His face toward you and give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-6:26 NIV