Garden Parasol with Pom Pom Dahlias

Hello Paper Crafters,

Today I have a card designed with Susan's new Parasol and Pom Pom Dahlias.  These die sets are in her new Birds & Bees Garden Release from Spellbinders.

I used the Spellbinders Raindrops 3-D embossing folder for the background.  

The Parasol was die cut using a piece of design paper from my stash. The handle and tip at top of parasol were die cut using mat silver metallic cardstock.   It was created just like Susan's shows us in her YouTube Video.   It has a small brace inside the parasol to help it from collasping when flowers are added.

The Pom Pom Dahlia die set was used to create all the flowers.  They were die cut using Susan's Specialty Cardstock then colored with markers. The flowers and leaves were shaped using the tools in Susan's Flower Tool Kit and assembled using Beacon Kids Choice Glue.   I used dimensional Pop-up glue dots to attach them.  

For the additional foliage I used Susan's Autumn Foliage die set.  The lemon verbena was die cut using watercolor paper, colored and shaped.  Purple berries were added plus one little lady bug.  Susan has included her little lady bug in many different die sets. 

I have included links below for Susan's new Birds & Bees Garden Release plus other products used.  Thank you for visiting my blog.   

Gathering Autumn Birch Leaves

Good Morning.  I hope you have a nice weekend.  In our area, the leaves have changed colors and the scenery everywhere is beautiful.

If you follow me, you know I have been busy creating a lot of leaves using Susan's Autumn Foliage die set in her new Birds & Bees Garden Release from Spellbinders.   I have used the Birch Leaf for this card.   I have a tutorial on my blog at this LINK.

For this card I was trying to do something very different from my usual card.  I decided to try and create an Autumn scene.  What do you think?  Did it come together ok?

This is a 5x7 inch card.  I cut a piece of white cardstock slightly smaller and lightly sponged two shades of blue ink on the upper 3/4 of the card.  Two shades of green were sponged on the lower portion.   For the bare tree branches, I used Susan's  Winter Bough and Evergreen Shrubs die set.  

I filled the bucket, from Susan's Geranium & Antique Bucket die set,  with Birch Leaves and a few Acacia branches.  On the side I created a small pumpkin using small egg dies from an old Easter die set.  A couple of sprigs of grass were added behind the pumpkin.  I used an old grass die from my stash.

A stamp from one of Susan's Quote's stamp set was gold embossed, fussy cut, sponged and attached with dimensional tape.

Tutorial for coloring Maple Leaves using ink pads and blending brushes

Hello Paper Crafters,

This is the third tutorial for coloring leaves in Susan's new Autumn Foliage die set.  This tutorial shows how I color Maple Leaves.  My favorite way to color leaves is to using Blending Brushes and dye ink pads to blend a different colors on each leaf.  

Die cut the leaves using watercolor paper.  Use the Leaf Tool that is in Susan's Flower Tool Kit and trace over all the score lines in the dye cut leaf.  For Maple Leaves, I like to start off by coloring the whole leaf using bright yellow ink on the front and back.

Use an orange ink to brush around the edges of the leaves.

Here I brushed on a  Crimson Red to blend over some of the orange ink.

To make the edges of the leaves darker, a brown ink was brushed around the edges. and lightly over the whole leaf.

- - - - - - - - - - - - 

Here is how I colored the second set of leaves I had die cut.

 I used bright yellow ink to just color small portions of each leaf.

Next I brushed on green ink leaving a small portion of the leaf uncolored.

To fill in the rest of the leaf, bright red ink was brushed on.   (Half the leaves here have red ink brushed on.)

I forgot to take a picture here, but I brushed mahogany ink over edges of leaves.  

After the leaves were colored, I used a mechanical pencil and lightly drew over the scored lines.

As with the other leaves, some dark spots were stamp on some of the leaves with  brown ink.

The leaves were lightly misted, on the back, with water and shaped using the tweezers from Susan's Flower Tool Kit.  Each point on these leaves were shaped.  It's a little extra work to shape the leaves, but it really makes them look very realistic. To finish the leaves, Clear Crystal Glaze was brushed over the top of each leaf.

I hope these tutorials give you inspiration for coloring autumn leaves.  You don't need to use the exact color ink pads I used or even use as many colors, but I'm sure you will have fun once you start creating your autumn leaves.  

I have Susan's new release linked below.  If you haven't ordered your dies yet, I would appreciate your support by clicking on the links below.  Thank you.

SELMA

Tutorial for coloring Oak Leaves using ink pads and brushes

Hello Paper Crafters,

This is the second tutorial for coloring leaves in Susan's new Autumn Foliage die set.  This tutorial shows how I color Birch Leaves.  Susan demonstrates on her FaceBook Live Videos how she colors the leaves using OLO markers.  I prefer to color the leaves using ink pads and blending brushes.  When using bushes, it is easy to blend several different colors.

To get started, die cut a lot of the leaves out of watercolor paper.  Use the Leaf Tool in Susan's Flower Tool Kit and go over score lines in the die cut leaves.  

Below are a series of pictures showing the ink pads I used for each step of coloring the leaves.  I like blending a variety of colors.  

Be sure to over lap and blend the colors as you color.

Ater coloring the leaves on the front and back, use a fine line pen to draw over the score lines on the leaves.  

If you want, you can add dark spots onto the leaves that you often see on leaves that have fallen to the ground.  I use a stamp and dark brown ink and add a few spots on each leaf.

Once you are finished coloring the leaves, lightly spritz the backside of the leaves and shape them using the Tweezers from Susan's Flower Tool Kit.  Once they are shaped, I like to add a Clear Crystal Glaze over the top.  This not only gives a little shine to the leaves, it also helps to hold the shape.

I will have one more tutorial for coloring Maple Leaves.

Susan's new Birds & Bees Garden release plus other products I use are linked below.

Tutorial for coloring Birch Leaves using ink pads and brushes

Hello Paper Crafters,

Susan has a new Autumn Foliage die set in her Birds & Butterfly Garden release.  She has several FaceBook Live videos and YouTube videos on how to color autumn leaves using OLO markers.  I have used OLO markers many times to color my leaves  but I also like to color them using ink pads and brushes to blend colors.  Below I have a tutorial on the process coloring using ink pads and brushes.  

I am posting three seperate blog post, each showing a different leaf in this release - Birch Leaves, Oak Leaves and Maple Leaves.  

Die cut the Birch Leaves using Susan's Autumn Foliage die set.  Use the leaf tool from her Flower Tool Kit to go over the scored lines.   I work on the Waffle Flower Stencil Mat and Blending Brushes.   For me using ink pads and brushes is a quicker method of coloring.  I start by pulling out a lot of different ink pads that I feel will be great autumn colors.  I like to blend a variety of colors, which will be shown in these tutorials, but you can use fewer colors if you want.  I have used a lot of Altenew Ink Pads.  I wanted to let you know that Altenew has a new style ink pad for their inks.  I have linked similar colors of ink pads below.  

Brush Altenew Honey Drizzle ink, or any bright yellow ink,  on both sides of the die cut birch leaves.  (You can see all the leaves I have die cut in the tray at the top of this picture.)  I always like to color a lot more leaves than I need for the project I am working on.  

Bush Altenew Autumn  Blaze (bright orange) ink on lower portion of leaf.  You only need to do this on front of leaf.

Brush Altenew Paper Bag Ink over orange ink and slightly above the orange and around edges.

I like to add dark spots on the leaves.  I have a Stampin' Up! Itty Bitty Background stamp I have had for many years that I use to stamp Altenew Expresso (dark brown) ink on each leaf.  (This stamp set is no longer available from Stampin' Up! but can be found on eBay.) You can splatter ink onto the leaf for the same effect.  

To ephasize the veins on the leaf, use a fine line pen and lightly draw the line over the scored lines.  I like to use a grey pen but you can use green or any color you want for the veins. 

To make the leaves realistic, you need to shape them.  Spritz the back of the leaves with a light mist of water and shape using the tweezers in the Flower Tool Kit.  

Shaped Leaves ready for a project.

I will be posting another blog post showing how to color Maple and Oak Leaves.  

New Release

Good Morning.  I am happy to tell you that you can now purchase Susan's new Birds & Bee Garden release from Spellbinders and Scrapbook.com.  I have the links at end of this post to both the bundle package (bundle available just from Spellbinders) for this release and the individual die sets and embossing folder. 

The card above is 6x6 inches.  I first created the background.  A 5 3/4 inch piece of white cardstock was covered with a piece of double sided adhesive - making sure the entire side is covered with the adhesive sheet. Glue this cardstock to the front of the card.   Leave the protective covering on the top side for now.  ( You can purchase this in sheets and cut it to size.)    A piece of 6 inch design paper was cut in strips.  It was first cut in half diagonally - upper right corner to bottom left corner.  Strips were then cut off each side - a few 1/4 wide and a few 1/2 inch wide from each side, leaving the corners larger.   Pull the protective covering off the front and start adding the pieces of design paper to the adhesive.  Start by attaching the corners, then adding the strips across the middle of the card, working from the corner pieces toward the center.  You  will have exposed strips of adhesive left on the card front.  Using gilding flakes, fill in the exposed areas.  Be sure to rub the flakes in well.  

You can see the shine of the gilding flakes better in this picture.

For the floral arrangement, I created three Black-eyed Susan flowers using Susan's new die set.  Susan has tutorials on YouTube showing how to create all her different flowers.  You can search Spellbinders Susan's Garden for these videos.  To create Susan's flowers, I use her Specialty Cardstock.  You can color using markers or brush/sponge on ink.  They are shaped using Susan's Flower Tool Kit and assembled using Beacon Kids Glue or Bearly Art Glue, which I like to put in the Sili Glue Pod. After shaping, I place them in Susan's Flower Mold,until dry,  so they hold their shape.  

Another new die set in this release is the pretty Pom Pom Dahlia.  I created one burgundy dahlia for this arrangement.  I love creating this pretty flower.  Be sure to watch Susan's video for easy instructions.

For the foliage, I used Susan's new Autumn Foliage die set.  All the leaves were colored in autumn colors, shaped and Crystal Clear Glaze added to them for a little extra shine.  I also used Susan's Lemon Verberna die from an earlier release. Small styrofoam balls were colored with alcohol ink and added for the berries.  A little ladybug that was die cut using the die in the Pom Pom Dahlia die set was added and Clear Crystal Glaze added.

One of Susan's stamps was used for the quote.  It was black embossed, fussy cut, and sponged with light yellow ink.  It was attached with dimensional tape.

The Birds & Bees release is so fun to work with to create your autumn creations.  

Links to products used are shown below.  

Thanks for visiting my blog. 

Pumpkin Tutorial

Good Morning Paper Crafters,

Autumn is here and a lot of us are creating cards with Autumn flower and leaves.  A fun container for floral arrangements is a pumpkin.  If you don't have a pumpkin die, you can create a pumpkin using oval layering dies.  

Depending on the oval dies you have, you can create different shapes of pumpkins.  You can create it using just five die cut ovals or up to seven ovals.  

For this pumpkin, I used elongated ovals and I used seven - two of the largest, 2 of the next size down, and three smaller.

Before arranging the ovals into a pumpkin shape, I brushed on a slightly darker ink for shading around the edges.  I used a 3-D embossing folder for the background and brushed the same ink over the raised design.  To attach the ovals to the background, I used dimensional tape in the center back and glue around the outside edge and bottom of each oval.  The dimensional tape created shadows around each edge.  

To fill the pumpkin I used Susan's Specialty Cardstock and used the Black-Eyed Susan, Pom Pom Dahlia and Chrysanthemum die sets for the flowers.   OLO markers were used to color the flowers. They were all shaped using Susan's Flower Tool Kit and assembled using Bearly Art Glue.  For fillers around the flowers, I used Susan' new Autumn Foliage die set for the colorful foliage behind the flowers.  The bird was die cut using the Hemlock, Cone and Chickadee die set.  One of Susan's stamps was used to gold emboss the sentiment.  Just the word 'Autumn' was cut off one of the quotes because I didn't have room for a larger sentiment.    

I hope this tutorial helps you create a pumpkin for your Autumn arrangements.