30 Day Gratitude Challenge: Day 18

Good morning!  It’s Wednesday and it’s been a very productive week but with Thanksgiving only a week away I have a lot to do and not a lot of time.  I’m back with today’s gratitude card and with the beautiful and unusually warm weather we’ve been having here this week and I’m trying to enjoy it while it lasts so I decided to use the fall views as inspiration for today’s gratitude card, I'm also sharing this card over on the SSINKspiration blog for our gratitude post (so you can go there for other ideas).  Also, Wendy Weixler showed this great technique (new to me) for stamping on an embossing folder before adding the cardstock and it is such a beautiful effect I created this card (and it was a big hit in card class last weekend!)  I will say, I loved it so much I decided to use it for our families Thanksgiving card and I embossed several pieces and noticed that no two pieces looked exactly the same and it was really fun to see how they all turned out when I did the same thing each time.

I started with Cajun Craze cardstock for the cardbase and then added a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock.  To create the background I used the Gorgeous Grunge stamp set (the largest splotched stamp) and stamped it using Hello Honey, Cajun Craze, and Always Artichoke ink (I started with the lightest color ink and worked my way to the darkest) on the inside of the Woodland Embossing Folder (this folder is amazing and it was just announced that it will retire at the end of the Holiday Catalog and only available while supplies last so if you don’t have it order it ASAP so you don’t miss out!) .  Then I added the Very Vanilla cardstock and ran it through the Big Shot (we found that running it through twice at the same time provides a better coverage of the ink on the cardstock).

The greeting is from the For All Things stamp set and I used Soft Suede and Cajun Craze Stampin’ Write Markers to ink the stamp and then cut it out with the Big Shot and Deco Labels Framilits (and finished by sponging around the edge with Hello Honey ink).  I created a background for the greeting using the Decorative Label Punch and Always Artichoke cardstock.  A piece of Hello Honey 5/8” Striped Cotton Ribbon provides some flag tails out the one side.  The final element was to add one of the little wooden acorn pieces from the Into the Woods Wooden Embellishments (I colored it using Crumb Cake and Soft Suede Stampin’ Write Markers before attaching it to the cardfront with glue dots.

I love absolutely everything about this card and this background really is a showstopper!  I can image doing the same thing with trees, and other stamped images and see what the result is (oh, I may have to play with this!!)

Below are easy ordering links for the products used on today’s project:                  

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Have a great day!

Diana