Thursday, November 18, 2010

Warm Tones for Autumn

Although this beautiful card by Louise Healy is not an Autumn creation per se, it could be. I often connect warm tones like browns, reds, rusts, golds with the season...for good reason. This Fall I have traveled back and forth from Washington to So Cal several times and have really enjoyed the full spectrum of colors. Last weekend we spent a day up in the San Bernardino mountains and just caught the tail end of some color, but mostly things are now a bit brown. This coming weekend they are looking at a snowy forecast.

To create this card, Louise paste embossed the pussy willow stencil (LL3007) with Matte Black Embossing Paste. Whenever you use the crackle paste it is a good idea to basecoat the stencil with any of the other pastes, remove the stencil and let this layer dry. The reason for this is ...that if you don't, the crackle paste could easily crack and crumble off the paper. The basecoat will give your crackled stencil image flexibility. I often use the matte pastes because #1 they dry faster and #2 they have a bit of a "tooth" to them, so the crackle will attach better. Once the matte paste is dry, reposition the stencil and paste-emboss the crackle paste on top. During this process, instead of scraping the crackle paste down to the stencil's surface, I leave just a thin skim of it over the entire stencil design. This will ensure that you don't scrape down to the level of the original matte paste layer. Now just wait and let it do it's crackle thing.

Louise finished the card by stenciling the stem with Chocolate Brilliance ink and then using a slightly larger brush she brushed the same ink off the edges of the card using a circular rouging motion. (Tip: the larger the brush you use for this edging, the softer the look.) She also used the "Picasso" stencil shield as she was stenciling with the brown to protect the white areas. She finished off the card with the dark brown embellishments placed on the diagonal. This card would be great to send to your favorite guy for any special occasion or gal for that matter.

1 comments:

Marijane said...

Louise's cards are always lovely and this is no exception! Reminds me of late fall, as it is looking now...mostly brown and subtle natural colors. (In the mid-west that is!)

Post a Comment

Blog Archive