Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Autumn Leaves

Hello, my name is Lisa Hoel and I'm honored to be a guest designer here at AJVD today. Fall is certainly in the air, and as I look outside of my window I see the trees turning all sorts of lovely red, yellow and orange colors. I love this time of year and was inspired to make this fall-themed card:


I started out with a kraft cardstock base and stamped the Woodgrain background builder with dark brown ink. I then embossed it with clear embossing powder to give it some more definition and a bit of shine. A bit of shading with Distress Ink and some spatters with red Distress Stain completed the base. Now for the fun Distress Ink technique I used on the circular layer, leaf prints!

First you need to collect your leaves. They should pliable if you are collecting ones that have already fallen. Crunchy will not work! Lay a leaf down on your craft sheet and dab the back side of the leaf with various colors of Distress ink. The mini pads work well because of their smaller surface area. You can blend more colors on the leaf, especially with a smaller leaf. Full size pads could work too. Mist the leaf once or twice. For me, one spritz gave me a more detailed print and two spritzes gave me a looser, watercolor effect. Don't spray too much on or the water will ooze out the sides in the next step and muddle your print.


Next lay the leaf, ink side down, carefully on the surface you are printing on. (I used tweezers.) Lightly hold the leaf in place and run a brayer over it to transfer the ink to the paper. Carefully lift off the leaf and that's it! You can dab extra ink off of your leaf with a baby wipe or paper towel and use it again for subsequent prints.


I tried watercolor paper, matboard, manila folder and a craft tag as substrates while I was experimenting. They all worked very well! Here are samples of my experimenting:

watercolor paper

manila, matboard and kraft
I hope you are inspired to try this on your own projects. It's a bit addicting so watch out.

AJVD Supplies:
AJVD Products used:
AJVD Supplies:

AJVD Supplies:

 Woodgrain Background Builder Stamp


Other products used:
Ranger Distress Inks
Ranger Archival Inks
Rock Candy Stickles
Clear embossing powder
Viva Pearl Pen - copper

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5 comments:

Shelly said...

Such a pretty card! Love the leaves!

Ann said...

Lovely card and tag, love the wood grain stamp.

Patti J said...

Beautiful card, and what a nice tutorial! Thanks for sharing with us, and congratulations on your guest DT spot!

Lisa Lara said...

Wow great card Lisa. I love how you stamped using real leaves. Great technique. I love your sweet little leaves you cut out. Delightful.

~amy~ said...

This is gorgeous! Awesome technique, Love the tutorial!