Saturday 13 September 2014

I love Autumn by Astrid

Hello everyone and thanks for dropping in. It's true, I love Autumn, the colours, the smells, the crispness in the air, so today I am sharing another Autumnal project with you.
A good friend is celebrating her 70th birthday, she is a keen gardener, so I thought I'd make her this gift bag to put some seed packets in.
I used one of the new Debbie Cotton stamps for my vocal image.

I started by creating my background papers, following a technique my blog friend Ingrid Kristina shared a while back on her blog, you can find it here:

She has done a brilliant step by step, so I will not repeat it all, I slightly adapted mine, but the principle is just the same. This is what you need:
A piece of printer paper
A piece of smooth card
Background stamps (I used the regency one and calligraphic mat 18)
Household bleach
Watercolour pencils
Twinkling H2Os
A brown paper bag, some twine, some matting card (I used Kraft core)

I followed Ingrid's instructions and landed up with a piece of printer paper that looked like this:
I wanted to use it for my leaf embellishments and I just love the effect of crumpling the paper before spraying it with Dylusions, it really looks like old leaves already, here's a close up:

I added some perfect pearls in Heritage gold and some gold perfect pearls powder into the mix also.

This paper is used to create coloured impressions on the smooth card, I was a bit disappointed with the effect on mine, but that was soon solved with some inking using Distress Inks:
This is what it looked like first of all:

A bit too blotchy for my liking and too much green. 
I trimmed the best part to about 4 x 6" and then inked around it with Mustard Seed, Ripe Permission and Aged Mahogany Distress Inks. I then used the Regency background stamp to do some bleach stamping. If you want to know how, please feel free to email me, but whatever you do, stick the stamp straight into water after you have used the bleach!! This is what it looked like now:
All the rest was simple: I stamped the vocal stamp, cut it with a Spellbinder die and while still in the die inked around it. I then coloured the image with watercolour pencils and some twinkling H2Os and matted it first onto Kraftcore and then by background paper.
I cut a tag from the remaining background paper, stamped in bleach, this time with a script stamp and then embellished both the bag and the tag with leaves which I had die-cut from the original bit of copy paper. I also used Distress inks to deepen the colours on those.
Here is the tag:
And here the final project surrounded with some of the leaves.
This was a fun project to do, and of course the techniques can be used for lots of different projects too.
Thank you Ingrid Kristina for your brilliant step by step, I know I will come back to it again and again!

Thanks for visiting here today

12 comments:

Juliz Design Post said...

Fabulous background and a technique I must check it out. The autumnal colours look beautiful and suit your project and stamp so well.
Julie x

Rita said...

What a fabulous bag Astrid. I hope whoever receives it appreciates it too. The colours and technique you used are wonderful. Looking forward to Monday. Hugs Rita xxx

Shilpa Nagaonkar said...

Love the vibrant background with crinkle technique. Beautiful autumn colors.
Brilliant idea to make gift bag with Autumn color theme..it is gorgeous!!

Helen said...

I love the background, will definitely check it out. What a great idea for a gift bag... may just need one myself for a present I have to give, so this is great timing Astrid!

Jenny Marples said...

What a fantastic bag and tag - thanks for that link (must play) and it's great to see your take on the technique. Beautiful autumnal colours too. Jenny x

Annie said...

A beautiful gift bag and great technique Astrid. Love the stamps too

X

TFS
Annie x

Candy C said...

I love this Astrid!! I definitely need to check out that technique you did fir your leaves and so forth! That us very cool! This is a beautiful gift bag! <3 Candy

Anneke said...

What a great techniek. A lovely gift. I will remember this great idea to make a giftbag with tea. Thanks for showing step by step. Love it Anneke.

Kirsten said...

That's gorgeous, I love the background.

Ros Crawford said...

Beautifully done ... Your friend will love this!

www.deeadamsart.blogspot.co.uk said...

Beautiful x

craftytrog said...

It's gorgeous Astrid! Checking out that technique! xxx