Falling Leaves

Encore Posts

I'm away again for a month or so.  There are some scheduled posts with new creations coming your way, but I'm also taking the chance to do some catching up here at Words and Pictures.   Projects which made their first appearances elsewhere for Design Team duties or Guest Designer opportunities, but which only had a sneak peek here, are being gathered together in the pages of my virtual scrapbook.  I'm calling them "Encore" posts and they're formatted differently (all the way down the centre), so you can spot them easily.

Please don't feel that you have to comment all over again!

There's something brand new on the way very soon, I promise, but before that arrives we're heading further back in time again - this time back to October 2013 for another Artistic Stamper creation which has been patiently waiting to be added to my online scrapbook here at Words and Pictures.  It looks like we may finally have reached the end of the autumn crafting so, for a final fling, here's what I wrote all those years ago.

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Hello everyone, Alison (butterfly) here, and like many of the team I've been having a wonderful time with Katy Fox's [now Katy Leitch] fabulous new leaf stamps.  I've been having lots of fun with gesso, inks, clear embossing and fussy-cutting (well... not so much fun with fussy-cutting - I'd be lying if I said it was my favourite thing to do!).

The background was a by-product of me doing some stencilling with the Roman Letters onto another tag with gesso.  I had this tag nearby and flipped the stencil straight over onto it to get a reverse print of the Letters here.

The gesso partly acts as a resist, but - being gesso - also takes some of the colour when you ink over it, as I then did.

I think there's Peeled Paint, Rusty Hinge, Spiced Marmalade and maybe a couple of others in the mix here.  (Sorry - this was made in the middle of house-moving so I've only a hazy recollection of what I actually did!)

I blended the same colours onto a piece of Manila cardstock, and then stamped the leaves in various combinations of Archival Ink - Sienna, Olive, Fern Green and Sepia - using two or three ink colours on each stamp.

I clear embossed the stampings as I went, using the Wow Superfine powder.  And then the cutting...  The embossing gives you a bit more sturdiness on the very fine areas, like the stalks, so it's quite helpful when you're cutting.

I seem to have added some Grunge Paste to create some "earth" at the foot of the tag, patting it on with the palette knife for extra texture, and inking it along with the rest of the tag.

One leaf had the privilege of being home to the Camus quote which is also on the stamp plate - it's a lovely font, I think.  It's stamped in Potting Soil Archival ink.

I arranged the leaves around the tag, and then mounted them using padded tape, sometimes a couple of layers of it, to get different heights above the background.

I like the glossy leaves against the chalky background of the gesso.

A very simple, natural tag topping of some raffia tied with twine, and my autumnal tag is done.

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We're almost, almost into December.  I can hardly believe it.  Time to bring on the pine trees, the holly, the snow and the ice as autumn crafting gives way to the winter.  Thanks for popping in to check out my Encore posts throughout November (as well as the newer creations too, of course).  I'm aiming to play along with the Funkie Junkie 12 Tags of Christmas in December, so it's going to be another mad dash of festive crafting, just like last year... but lots of new things to enjoy, I hope.  For now, I'll love you and leave you, and I'll see you in December!

The last dead leaves of fall crackled underfoot, winter-crisp.
From American Gods by Neil Gaiman