Kindness and Gratitude

It's time for a new month of challenges at Our Creative Corner. Our hostess this month is the fabulous Diane Gilbert! She's starting us off with a color challenge: Cajun Craze, More Mustard, Old Olive, Early Espresso and Very Vanilla. Perfect for those fall cards!

This was the technique card at my club last month. I saw this image from the Day of Gratitude stamp set used with a cool technique that was definitely a "wow" with my club. Meg Loven called it the custom felt pad technique. It's basically this: take a piece of plain-old felt. (I folded mine over so it was three layers thick to keep the ink from soaking through onto my work surface.) Trace the outline of your stamp onto the felt with a pen, then fill the whole outlined area with classic ink reinkers. This will stay wet enough that you can stamp several times without reinking it. It's not going to look precise but it's very cool - try it and see!

The rest of the card was fairly simple. I used a mustard sheet from the Autumn Spice specialty paper and layered several things on it. First I stamped the En Francais background - I know you can't see it, but it's there! Next I used generation stamping with the leaf image from the stamp set. Finally I sponged lots of mustard ink on it - a little bit over the whole panel and even more on the edges. The olive ribbon was knotted with linen thread, then if you cut the thread long enough you can tie the ends through the button and it's all nice and neat. A sentiment from Occasional Quotes finished it off.

I know you'll want to visit the OCC blog and see what the rest of the team created with these fun fall colors. Please come and play along - we couldn't do it without you!