bird + leaves + stencil + colorburst

here's a card that almost got away! i blame the fact that when stephanie was here we had soooooo much fun playing with paper, ink and various other art supplies that things like taking photos and blogging just sort of fell by the wayside.

bird image and text paper taken from two different falling-apart old books; aspen mini template: the crafter's workshop; earth tone colorburst powders: ken oliver; burnt orange cardstock: core'dinations; glossy black cardstock: ranger; outliner pen: faber castell pitt in xs; sketchbook paper: canson; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sewing machine

this 6x6" aspen tree stencil was already one of my all faves, even before i discovered how beautifully it worked with ken oliver's colorburst powders, but YOWZA i love it even more now! this particular version actually uses the template more like a stamp; you know how when you use a stencil with wet media, in addition to getting color on the paper you're stenciling, there's usually quite a bit that gathers on top of the template itself? well, thanks to a post of dina wakley's that i read a few years ago, i started "blotting" the extra color up with a piece of scrap paper or cardstock; and sometimes i even wind up loving the "blot" page more than the thing i was actively working on, lol! this was one of those times. since i already had a gorgeous forest, i just needed a sweet little dude from a vintage bird book and some sort of frame, for which i employed leaves diecut from an old book with pages that were just a teeeeeeeeeny bit glossy. loads of machine stitching ensued et voila!

the daring cardmakers' september elemental challenge is "fall in love with autumn" for which they'd like us to select at least three facets this luscious inspiration board; i've chosen the colors, the leaves, and the combination of white + trees that we can see in the lovely pic of the fence.

meanwhile, the ladies at our crafty corner are kicking off their very first challenge by celebrating autumn leaves, so i thought i'd pop in and join them!

i can't resist one more pic: this was on IG already, but not blogged; remember how i said photos kind of took a bit of a backseat to all the fun stephanie and i were having? the proof of that is that here's the ONLY pic we thought to take of the two of us together, i'm kinda kicking myself about that, but still i do love this pic of our twenty ink-stained, multicolored fingers!!! ♥

i've been incredibly lucky throughout my life to have found friends i can laugh with, cry with, eat with, talk with, work with, play with, and especially make art with; the fact that eight or so years ago i managed to find one particular friend called stephanie with whom i could immediately do ALL of those things, despite the fact that we live 1000 miles apart, just totally blows my mind... in the best possible way!!! ♥♥♥