My first Stampin Up! set….

Hi there! I hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weather we are having…. We took the kiddos to our town’s Autumn Fest and the parade today, and it was so much fun to see them people watching and trying new things to eat. The weather finally has that crisp nip in the air, and it truly feels like autumn may be upon us. (Let’s hope so, anyway!) I’m totally ready for cozy sweaters and soup and beautiful trees and pumpkin picking and apple picking and apple cake and pies and…. well, you get the idea. I’m just ready for fall and all of the fun that comes with it.

 

I thought this sentiment would look gorgeous combined with watercolor, and so I dug out my under-utilized Gansai Tambi watercolor set to create the color wash for the background. After heat embossing my sentiment with Princess Gold on some Strathmore watercolor paper, I used a shade of pink and orange to create the kind of melon-y color wash behind the sentiment. I don’t like to use a lot of embellishment or fancy design on sympathy cards, so I decided to use a few blooms from the Papertrey Ink Vintage Blooms set. I heat embossed them on the same Strathmore watercolor paper and die cut them with the coordinating dies. My trusty Zig Clean Color markers were put to use on the blooms and leaves, since I don’t quite trust myself watercoloring with actual watercolors and being able to create any kind of depth or shadows. (I know, practice, but who has the time to practice?) For the leaves, I simply die cut them, then heat embossed just the center lines to indicate the center of the flower in gold EP. I wanted the color to bleed all the way to the edges of the die cuts, so I didn’t add any of the other images included in the stamp set for the leaves.