When you’ve set yourself a personal challenge to design and make 24 different cards in 24 hours, you’ll do anything.  For the fourth card in the series I fell back on a technique I tried some months ago.  This time I decided to create hand coloured Designer Series Paper in autumn colours.

HAND COLOURED DESIGNER SERIES PAPER

In the past, Stampin’ Up! have sold paper that was designed to be coloured, but that’s not what I used.  My Designer Series Paper (DSP) actually comes from the Nature’s Poem DSP pack.

The leaves on this paper are a pale brown. almost like an old photograph and I’ve previously coloured them with a single Stampin’ Blends alcohol marker.  This time though I decided to try using several Stampin’ Blends to give the paper a more autumnal feel.

For today’s hand coloured Designer Series Paper I chose Stampin’ Blends in light and dark Pumpkin Pie, light Soft Suede, light Shaded Spruce and light Real Red.  My technique was simple, start by colouring the whole leaf with the light Pumpkin Pie and then add some of the other colours.  Finally I went over the whole leaf again with the light Pumpkin Pie to blend everything together.

I worked in stages, completing one cluster of leaves on the 4″ x 5-1/4″ piece before then moving on to the next one.

Once the whole piece was coloured I trimmed off two 3/4″ x 5-1/4″ strips and set the three pieces aside.

A SIMPLE CARD BASE

Using my Stampin’ Trimmer I cut and scored a piece of Thick Very Vanilla Card for the card base.  Then I folded it along the scored line and sharpened the crease with a Bone Folder.

I took the 2-1/2″ x 4″ piece of hand coloured Designer Series Paper and fixed it to the card base with Multipurpose Liquid Glue (Tombow).

Next I fixed one of the 3/4″ strips of DSP to the right-hand edge of a layer of Very Vanilla Card with liquid glue and then added that to the inside of the card base.

Finally the last 3/4″ strip was attached to the side edge on the front of a Very Vanilla Medium Envelope.

THANKFUL FOR YOU

The ‘I am thankful for you’ sentiment comes from the Painted Harvest Stamp Set.

I began by wiping a piece of Thick Very Vanilla Card with an Embossing Buddy to remove any oils and static.  Then I used VersaMark ink to stamp the sentiment.  I sprinkled the sticky ink with Gold Stampin’ Emboss Powder and tapped off the excess, then removed some stray specks.  Finally I melted the remaining embossing powder with my Heat Tool set on 2 (high).

With the sentiment done, I decided to use my Big Shot and Magnetic Platform to cut it out.  I chose the #3 oval from the Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies (counting from the smallest up).  I then added a few gold sequins from the Metallics Sequin Assortment using Mini Glue Dots.

Before adding the sentiment to the card front I thought it needed something to ‘anchor’ it to the background.  So I used Tear & Tape Adhesive to add two pieces of ribbon.  First some 5/8″ Burlap and then some Daffodil Delight 1/4″ Double-Stitched ribbon.  Attaching the ribbon as a strip this way is a good solution if you’re not confident tying bows.

With the ribbons in place, all that was left was for me to attach the sentiment with Stampin’ Dimensionals.

This is a simple layout and I could perhaps have added a layer of card under the DSP.  Overall though I’m pretty happy with how this project turned out.  Given more time I would not colour right to the edge of the images as I noticed afterwards that there was more bleeding than on regular cardstock.  That said it doesn’t look quite as bad in real life as it appears in the close-up photo.

If you’d like to see the earlier project where I coloured this DSP you’ll find it in my blog post One year on.

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