Sixth Street Sundries

Emily Midgett

season of wonder

Autumnal Thinking of You with Simon Says Stamp!

This post was sponsored by Simon Says Stamp. Thanks, Simon!

Hi friends! It’s finally the weekend, and I am so happy about that! We are in the complete throes of autumn here, with incredibly beautiful autumnal foliage making it a feast for the eyes every time I look or go outside! I am reading Anne of Green Gables with my big kids, and we just read the line “I’m so glad that I live in a world where there are Octobers.” It’s so true! It took a while for our trees to start impressing the world with their colors, but the oranges, yellows, peaches, reds, and magentas are finally here. Nature is surely showing off! This card is an embodiment of the view outside, filled with colorful foliage and a bit of sparkle and shine. Let’s get started with the details!

I began by creating a vivid ink blended base panel using Concord & 9th Cayenne, Pawsitively Saturated Blush and Cheeky, and Rainbow Splash Buttercream inks. (Side note- Rainbow Splash Buttercream ink is my new favorite color. It blends so beautifully with such a huge variety of colors, and is a little bit of a chameleon, changing the tone a bit with different color pairings. You should check it out of you haven’t yet!) The Buttercream ink worked beautifully as the lightest shade of my red and peach autumn ombré background.

Next, I heat embossed the new Autumn Leaf stamp from the Season of Wonder release onto some vellum with some sparkling metallic embossing powder. I fussy cut the image with my sharp scissors so that I could pop it up with some foam adhesive on my blended background. I also die cut some coordinating colorful foliage using the Etched Berry Branch and Ornamental Fine Leaves dies, using colored cardstock for the fine leaves and Tonic’s Purple Rain cardstock for the berry branch.

To coordinate with the warm, iridescent purple foil foliage die cuts, I die cut the detail layer of the Fancy Thinking of You die from some super dark maroon cardstock and backed it with a peachy outline layer. I popped the sentiment up on my huge glittery vellum leaf image using foam adhesive, then arranged the foliage die cuts to be peeking out from behind the sentiment. Don’t be afraid to cut your leaf die cuts apart; by doing so, you allow yourself the freedom to create fuller, more lush bouquets (or leaf clusters, in this case). After I had arranged all of my foliage pieces, I added some Topaz Twinkle gems for one last bit of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for my project today! The leaves will probably be blown away this weekend, as we are expecting a cold front (just in time for trick-or-treating on Halloween… darn it!), so I am going to enjoy the beautiful views while they last. Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!

Happy Autumn in Vivid Color!

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!