unbe ♥LEAF♥ able!

this week's challenge at shopping our stash is called "LEAF me alone" and i'm pretty sure you'll have already surmised that we want to see leaves on your project: stamped ones, collaged ones, real ones, silk ones, leaf stickers, leaf diecuts, or even hand-painted leaves embellished with a really really lot of machine stitching, like these:

maple (ish!) leaves painted with artist's loft and koi watercolors on strathmore watercolor paper; veins and outlines created with multiple layers of free-form machine stitching using coats and clark extra strong upholstery thread-- b/c it shows up more than ordinary thread-- which you can get it at any joann fabrics store. when it was finished i attached the painted panel to a 7" square matte black card blank. and the leaves lived happily ever after. the end. :)

jeff says this is his favorite card out of all the ones i've ever made. i'm pretty psyched about that because it happens to be the one i made for our friend paul's birthday, which is obviously a very very special occasion! i think the watercolor painting of the leaves is one of the best ones i've done so far; but more importantly, it was the most fun to make, and i hope that some of the joy of that will transfer itself to paul as he celebrates!

i can basically only draw and paint in two dimensions, and i think that's why i was never satisfied with my efforts in the past; because i had it in my head that everything has to be rendered in 3D to be good; and obviously your work has be GOOD to be enjoyable. HA! turns out, i was pretty spectacularly wrong on both counts! this summer i was lucky enough to take a sketching class with julie balzer at the ink pad in manhattan, and even before i arrived, julie had already said (in the class description) something that made me completely re-evaluate my mindset: "let go of the need to capture images photo-realistically... you have a camera for that!" she's totally right! the other big discovery i've made the over last few summers participating in the ICAD project is: i really LIKE to draw and doodle and dabble with paints, whether or not it results in a lovely finished product. usually it doesn't, but this time it did-- BONUS-- woohoo!

i'm entering this in cupcake inspirations #285 which is all about AUTUMN:

as well as the simon says stamp wednesday challenge where, this week, ANYTHING GOES! 

meanwhile the SOS "LEAF me alone" challenge runs until next monday night and the design team have concocted a number of amazingly inspiring projects that you totally need to see right now! ♥