This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!
Hi friends! I’ve professed my general disinterest in red, orange, and yellow in previous posts, but it seems that I cannot get away from them completely when creating with autumn-themed projects. I have found that adding a pop of vivid fuchsia or soft peach to the traditional autumn color schemes enlivens the entire color palette and makes it much easier for my brain to use!! I love that simply tweaking a style or theme to better fit your own personal preferences can make the creative process so much easier. For today’s project, I chose to work with the Autumn Cascade layered stencil set from the Simon Says Stamp Season of Wonder release, pairing it with a variety of gorgeous (semi-non-traditional) inks from the Pawsitively Saturated line. Let’s get started with the details!
When working with layered stencils like this, one of my favorite ways to create a unique background is to do a tone-on-tone stencil technique. That is, I blend the entirety of the background panel first with my desired ink colors, then lay my stencils over the top and blend with the exact same colors in the exact same order. The result is a lovely and colorful background, with a slightly more subtle pattern because of the tone-on-tone effect. For this project, I chose to first ink blend Amethyst, Pucker, Peachy, Lemonade, and Citrine inks down the front of my panel of A2 white Hammermill cardstock.
After I had finished creating my colorful background panel, I laid the first stencil from the Autumn Cascade layered stencil set over the top and used the same shades of ink, in the same order, to blend the first layer of the stencil. I made sure to use a little more pressure and a little more ink to blend these stenciled images so that they were visible amongst the blended background. Adding layers of blended ink is similar to adding layers of watercolor; with each subsequent layer added, the color is intensified, but if you start too intense, you’re kind of stuck. It helps to start light and add more layers as you go!
After I had blended the first layer, I laid the second stencil from the Autumn Cascade layered stencil set and mentally shifted my colors a bit. Instead of starting with the same shades as the base layer and the first stencil layer, I added Mocha ink at the top of my ink line and worked my way down. This way, the details on the second stencil were still visible, because I used ink that was a smidge darker than my first layer!
After I had finished all of my ink blending, I splattered some super sparkly, iridescent metallic watercolors. I love adding splatters of metallic watercolor to ink blended backgrounds… I think it adds just the right touch of sparkle and artistic flair!
Once I had finished the background, I die cut a vivid purple foil frame using the A2 Thin Frames dies (a favorite die set of mine and almost always out on my desk!) using some Electric Purple glossy foil from Tonic. I also used residual ink leftover on my blending brushes to blend some autumnal colors on a spare bit of white cardstock, from which I then die cut and embossed the individual leaves and acorns from the Oak Leaves and Branches Embossing Folder + Die set. For the greeting, I die cut the detail layer of the new Happy Autumn die from brown glitter cardstock, then the background from vellum and layered them together. I layered all of the die cut pieces using dots of liquid adhesive, finally adding a few shimmering gems for one last touch of sparkle!
Well, that’s all for me today! Remember if something is out of stock, you can always sign up for an email notification when it comes back in stock. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
Shockingly vibrant! A stunning card.