Hello November!

Wow! October went by fast!! It was a busy month around my house. Now it’s time for a little Fall reflection! I’ve been cleaning up my computer picture files and sorting into a separate folder all the pictures of cards I’ve made . There were more cards than I remembered - I’ve been making cards since around 2010! There were pictures of the cards I made for past Dare to Get Dirty and other challenges on the SplitCoast Stampers site, and other cards I’ve made through the years. My plan is to post pictures of some of those cards in days to come. I hope you’ll like seeing those older cards!

This card is a new one and features the Honey Bee Stamps Lovely Layers Coneflower Honeycuts die set and this Darice Woodgrain embossing folder. I have adored this Coneflower die set since I first saw cards made with it. It makes beautiful flowers in all ranges of colors. All the layers in the card add so much detail. I used colored cardstock to make the parts of the flower and leaves. Then I used alcohol markers to add shading detail.

The embossing folder gives great detail (it is NOT a 3D embossing folder). I used a brown ink pad to shade the sides and lightly highlight the raised portions of the embossed paper. I really like that the grain of the embossing folder is not too small- it shows up well and isn’t too “busy”.

Next, I wanted to have a center focus area. I first tried using a circle cut from a page of dictionary, but the printing competed visually with the sentiment die and I put too much shading brown ink around the edges and made it look odd. So- off it came!! I ended up using plain vellum in the center. I really wanted the flower to be the star of the show! My Clean and Simple (CAS) style is showing!!

Lastly, I added some glitter dots as “eye candy” - keeps us looking in the triangle!