Designer's Choice on Dream Scheme Thursday

The calendar says tomorrow is the first day of Autumn, but you would never know it by the weather.  We've had warm summer days in the 80s-90s with no fog, so maybe now those last few tomatoes will finally ripen. 

For today's post, I wanted to do something in keeping with the seasons, the fall colors,  the (hopefully) cooler weather, and that led me to this beautiful Japanese Maple stencil (LJ906).  The warm orange-red colors of the leaves are a perfect reminder of the changing seasons.  I was amazed at how quickly this card came together.

I dry embossed the stencil and, with the stencil still in place, applied several different inks from a pale yellow to a darker reddish brown to get the desired shading.   There was a little too much white space for me, even after trimming the image to a smaller card size, so I punched a strip of patterned paper using EK Success Lattice Chain punch.  Then, after carefully cutting around the outside edge of the leaves, I adhered the smaller piece to the left side of the card base, layered the punched piece on top, and then positioned the larger piece on the right side so that it fit the card with just a small bit of patterned paper showing in the background.  Couldn't have been easier.  Give it a try . . . I think you'll like it.

Since this is a "free" week, but sure to check the other Dream Team blogs for more ideas and inspiration.  And don't forget to stop on over at the DREAM it UP! blog and leave us a note.  We love hearing from you.

Happy crafting,
Liz