My rainy day

The dark clouds cast a shadow in my bedroom yesterday morning. Rhythmic droplets dancing on the window unit air conditioner awakened me from my deep slumber. The outer rain bands of Hurricane Hanna had come to visit us. I quickly got out of bed to start my rainy day in my little yellow house. After lingering over a hot cup of coffee and checking email, I decided to devote my day to creating a few cards.

This one that I'm sharing today was inspired by the beautiful green printed designer paper from K&Co's collection called Margo, a lovely rich, green, muted with teal tones and accented with berry. I just love this paper! The stamps that I used to create this card is from a set called "Clear Leaves" sold by Clear Dollar Stamps. This set is amazingly versatile. There are many types of leaves in this set, and they are all realistic and natural looking.

First I cut a 5" wide x 10" high piece of Paper Trey white cardstock, scoring it in half, making the card size 5"x5". I cut a green patterned print mat to 4.75"x4.75", and then a berry solid colored piece of cardstock to 4.25"x4.25". I created a background pattern by scatter stamping 2 different leaves stamps in Versamark Watermark Ink and Stampin Up!'s Forest Foliage ink. Next, I created 3 nesting rectangular mats by hand, using a metal straight edge and Xacto knife. The outer mat in berry, was paper pierced around the border using the Stampin Up! Mat Pack and a paper piercing tool. Next, I added the green mat, and then the white mat. On the white mat, I stamped leaves in Stampin Up!'s Forest Foliage, and then colored in the white areas of the leaves with Prismacolor Pencils, and blended it in using a blending stump and odorless mineral spirits. I sponged around the white mat edges using Ancient Page Bordeaux ink. I then glued all 3 mats down, and then popped up the bottom mat using 4 square Dimensionals from American Crafts to add dimension. I doodled white dots and evergreen dots with gel pens and felt-tip pens around the mat borders. The sentiment was stamped on a separate piece of white cardstock that I had trimmed to size, then sponged around the edge using Ancient Page Bordeaux ink for added interest. I stamped the leaf on the white cardstock, using Stampin Up! Forest Foliage ink, using the stamping off method. This gives it a second generation ink intensity which softens the image. I overstamped the sentiment using Adirondack Pitch Black ink. I doodled dots around the edges of the sentiment with an evergreen felt-tip marker. I embellished the card with a teal green ribbon, a pink photo anchor held in place with a pink rhinestone jeweled circular brad. I finished it off with a fabric covered circular big brad with pink jeweled bling. White doodle dots were added around the outside green/teal mat. Voila! Done.