The musings and offerings of a burgeoning greetings master

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Thankful, Through the Pain and All...

My house is on a beautiful 3/4 acre lot, with many trees.  We love our lot, and we are smart enough to allow professionals mow the lawn for us, because we would either wreck it or be living with waist high grass.  We are also pretty frugal.  Okay, we're cheap, especially when it comes to doing stuff we really know how to do.  When we asked our lawn people about leaf collection, they came back with a quote that made my eyes pop.  Needless to say, we declined nicely. 

Let me tell you how we are DEFINITELY having them do the leaves next year.  We have already disposed of 27 lawn bags of leaves, and I bagged up 11 more yesterday.  There are probably another 20-something bags worth still out there on the lawn.  I love my trees.  I do.  I am NOT such a fan of all the leaves.

Of course, my favorite tree is the last one in my WHOLE neighborhood to change color, and while it is indeed magnificent, it makes me nuts to think I am going to be collecting those leaves well into the middle of November.  I am getting too old for this.  I need to move back to a city, I think.  Speaking of backs, mine is killing me.

I am able to break from the leaf nightmare to make a card or so every once in a while.

I made this--

I won a tutorial class from Beth at My Little Craft Blog, where she makes a wonderful card set and box.  The LEAVES are the real jewel of this class, and I will be using her technique until the end of time to do leaves from now on. 

This involves using inks and daubers to color your punched or die cut leaves, then coating them in Versamark and coating them with clear embossing powder, which of course you then heat with your heat tool.  They are gorgeous and shiny and just wonderful!

This card is on GKD Kraft card stock, and the papers are Stampin' Up.  The gold flag piece is done with Martha Stewart gold glitter embossing powder (which is just a bit chunky for my taste, actually).

The stamp is from Inkadinkadoo, and I used my Versamarker to get the tree to accept more glitter embossing powder.  I used a background stamp from Inkadinkadoo on the pale grey piece with some SU crumbcake ink to give it some interest.  Spellbinders dies made the framed window for the image, and the whole piece is raised off the kraft with some foam tape.

I like Thanksgiving cards.  I am entering this one in the Paper Smooches Thankful challenge.  I love their stamps, and I have NONE yet.  Wish me luck!

I have some pictures of one of the card sets I made using the instructions from the video class I won.  I changed up the design a bit, because that's what I do.  Those pictures will be coming up soon!

Thanks so much for stopping by!
All Best-
Richard

9 comments:

  1. This is beautiful! I had to laugh that your card actually HAS leaves on it after all that whining about the leaves! ;)

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  2. I love the card - the colors are so rich!! I guess with that much land you can get a bunch of leaves! Well, I'm sure they are pretty, too. Hugs!

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  3. I love this card the colours are gorgeous. Caroline xxx

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  4. I nearly spit my coffee on the screen when I saw your card, Richard! I laughed out loud when I saw LEAVES on it!!! What fun. So sorry you are dealing with that, my friend. Your card is gorgeous, and the class sounds like it was definitely worth taking! Can't wait to see more of your creations. Just warn me next time to put down my coffee first... cya!

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  5. Hahahaha, sorry, but not even a month ago your post was titled,
    'Mr Cardmaker is in Autumn Heaven'!
    Your cards are wonderful, and I get it about the leaves!!!

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  6. yummy Richard the colors are as vibrant as those leaves blowing in the bright sunshine of autumn, You have captured the feel wonderfully. I hope to see you again someday in the chat room. Hugs~Donna

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  7. I rake my leaves with a leaf blower into the neighbor's yard right after I see their car leave for work...BWhahahahahahaha. I'm kidding, totally kidding, but don't think the thought hasn't been tempting!
    Best of luck with the leaves. I know it's never ending, kind of like laundry...
    Your card however is preserved Autumn at it's BEST. Would be kinda funny to have one with a miniature lawn bag too..LOL!
    Hugs,
    Lisa x

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  8. Not laughing at your sore back but at the picture your created LOL So now you know paying for the clean up is worth every cent! Great card. I'm pushing some bits around trying to create Thanksgiving cards for my US family. I use the VersaMark/emboss technique on any number of projects and love the effect.

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  9. Absolutely gorgeous card! Wow, you're so lucky to have so much land, our garden is the size of a postage stamp lol Sorry to hear about your spam problem - it's strange how some blogs are susceptible to it :( x

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