Leaves - UKPC November Swap

Hello Everyone

It's been another busy day at Casa Worthington. We've had builders here fixing the pointing on the gable end wall - a temporary fix until the better weather when the entire side and back walls will have to have a total repointing job done on them. Apparently the house has settled down, rather like we have done here too. I've also been sorting out the bookshelves in the spare room with the intention - by weeding stuff out, donating books and tossing magazines - of making it look less like the junk room and more like the guestroom it's supposed to be. Another long overdue job ticked off - it's only taken me two years!

And because of that flurry of activity no crafting got done so I'm sharing a card made recently for the UKPC November card swap - the theme for which was 'Leaves'.

How it was made:

• Mustard coloured American Crafts Smooth Cardstock was cut to create a 6" square card blank.
• A square dark brown cardstock, trimmed slightly smaller than the card front, and one of patterned paper, Falling Leaves from the Carta Bella A Perfect Autumn collection were layered together. At this stage I wrapped a length of some gorgeous shimmery red ribbon - been in my stash for eons - from top to bottom of the layers before adhering all to the card front.
• To make the topper I inked through a Clarity Stamp template, Leaves 3, on to a snippet of smooth white card. Distress inks used, Shabby Shutters, Crushed Olive, Scattered Straw, Dried Marigold, Brushed Corduroy and Fired Brick - in that order too. The intention was to create the gradual change of colour that we see in our autumn leaves, starting with the greens at the base, merging into yellows and golds in the centre and finishing with red around the edges. Once that was done, I stamped the ferns, from IndigoBlu's Nature II stamp set, on the leaf with Memento Rich Cocoa, then it was matted and layered on to a piece of the patterned paper and brown cardstock before gluing it, at a jaunty angle, on the card front.
• To make the foliage embellishment I raided the snippet box, picking out shades of brown, gold, silver and red card in a variety of textures, and cut out various shapes of leaves and ferns using dies from Tattered Lace Lavish Blooms Leaves set and the ivy spray from the Mini Dies set. Once I had a little pile of die-cuts, I fiddled and fussed until I was happy with how they looked then used a glue gel to adhere them in place. 
• The aurora borealis embellishment was a bit of an afterthought but it very nicely covers up the area where the leaves all meet in the centre. 
• Yet another afterthought, and one I really like, was the yellow Stickles used to edge the topper and highlight areas of the fern stamp. I think the extra bling from the glitter glue looks lovely. 
• The final touch was to add the ribbon bow top left.

I'm submitting this card to the following challenge:

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 205 - my second visit this week!

Looking at the card reminds me of how beautiful the trees were here in the west of Scotland this autumn. Such a shame that the series of storms we've had recently have left the trees bare and the leaves a squishy, squelchy mess ... no leaf crunching for us now. Still, there's always next autumn to look forward to.

Hope your day has been good and tomorrow will be wonderful.