tic-tac-toe... let's go!

it's a make-your-own challenge kind of week at shopping our stash, since lovely mimi has devised (and hand lettered!) an awesome tic-tac-toe style board for us to choose any row, column or diagonal of three consecutive elements!

i chose the diagonal that runs from top left to bottom right: leaves, stash more than five years old and powder pigments... in my case colorburst, of course!

patterned paper scraps from: authentique, glitz design, graphic 45, photo play and carta bella; scraps of gold glitter paper: american crafts pow; glossy black cardstock bases: ranger; circle die: spellbinders/nestabilities; leaf dies: provocraft/cuttlebug (small) and sizzix/tim holtx (large)... used on bits of vintage book paper painted with autumnal shades of colorburst; ink for edges: colorburst; pen outline: faber-castell pitt artist pen in SX; gold distress stickles: ranger; flowers: prima; brads: queen and co; labels: dymo; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, scor-tape by sookwang

ok, so the leaves and the colorburst are pretty obvious, i think. i painted various vintage papers somewhat randomly with 2-3 shades of the latter, then diecut them. i inked and outlined around the edges and dabbed on a little bit of gold stickles, which is hard to see in photos but very cool irl. the 5-year-old items are the set of cuttlebug dies i used for the smaller leaves-- one of the first dies i ever purchased. for that matter, the tattered foliage die i used for the larger leaves is probably close to five years old as well. the little white prima blooms are from the "got flowers" era, which is probably 6 or 7 years too, right? of course, my trusty dymo labelmaker is much older than anything else i used, and it's still going strong!

i made four artist trading coins, for an instagram swap with an "autumn" theme. the requirement was actually only to make three... but i decided the camus quote fit better when broken into four pieces.

all of the papers i used were scraps from my september and october classes at paper anthology. which were still sitting in a pile in my art lair, and were perfect to make a neutral, but not boring background for the coins.

the tiny red mini brads are pretty elderly too, actually. they probably come from around the same time as the little prima flowers.

there's lots more inspiration awaiting you from the lovely ladies at SOS, why not treat yourself to some eye candy, darlings? ♥