Elegant Leaves for Freshly Made Sketches 757

Well, it turns out that I do my best procrastination in my craft room. I'll blame the lovely sketch at Freshly Made Sketches but the score for today is: jobs ticked off the list 2, cards made 3. And if I did it in minutes, it would be more like: job list 45 minutes, craft room 3 hours. 😀

I just wanted to create my own way today so I went back to my roots: lots of white space, layering of elements, pretty colours, nature imagery - in this case Elegant Leaves, since foliage is one of my go to things. 

The card base is Thick Basic White. The card front is embossed with the Textured Tree Ring 3D embossing folder. I was late to the party on that one - I bought it a couple of weeks ago but now it's on the Last Chance List. So it's still not too late to add it to your craft library. 

I replaced the small rectangle in the sketch with a small arch cut using the Everyday Arches dies. I added some background patterning using Gears & Textures in both Granny Apple Green and Lemon-Lime Twist inks.

The fun part was making the leaves. The Elegant Leaves bundle has so many options for creating leaves both stamped and die cut - not to mention two-step stamping options and layering stamps with die cuts - that my desk ended up littered with leaves in various configurations. 

The ones that made the final cut were: large leaf stamped with Granny Apple Green on Lemon-Lime Twist cardstock and sponged around the edges with Granny Apple Green ink, large skeleton leaf die cut from some DSP from Valley in Bloom, and medium leaf done in two steps. The outline/vein stamp is in Granny Apple Green and the infill stamp a mix of Granny Apple Green, Garden Green and Lemon-Lime Twist which were applied with sponge daubers.

I added a double bow made with Linen Thread to give the impression they'd been tied together as a bouquet of leaves and then added a trio of Shimmering Dots in Granny Apple Green.

The sentiment is made with the Sweetly Sentimental Hot Foil dies and some Gold Hot Foil. Note that this requires the Stampin' Up! Hot Foil system but you could add any sentiment, either stamped or embossed. 

I enjoyed making this card much more than I would have enjoyed spring cleaning the bathroom cupboards or cleaning out the garage then making a dump run... and those jobs will still be there tomorrow. 😀

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