Falling Leaves

Hello everyone, Alison (butterfly) here, and like many of the team I've been having a wonderful time with Katy Fox's fabulous new leaf stamps.  I've been having fun playing 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.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  The October Alter Something Challenge still has a few days to run here at The Artistic Stamper, so do come and play... and I'll see you again in November.

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper Stamps:  Katy Fox, Leaves
Crafter's Workshop: Roman Letters stencil
Distress Inks: Peeled Paint, Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge
Archival Inks: Olive, Fern Green, Sepia, Sienna, Potting Soil
Grunge Paste
Wow Embossing Powders: Superfine Clear Gloss
Gesso
Manila tags
Manila paper