Seeing the woodland for the trees

I have been absent for a while. At the end of June, my lovely Mum was suddenly taken ill and we were stunned to discover she had terminal cancer ... to make matters even worse, five days after Mum was diagnosed, my husband had a heart attack right in front of me... thankfully he survived and is doing okay now...but my Mum died exactly six weeks after being  diagnosed. As you can probably imagine, crafting took a back seat.


I promised Mum I would be okay (being Mum she worried about her children right until the very end)  and we agreed that crafting would be my saving grace in tough times...and it will be, so I am back...

I know I am late to the party and  the web is filled with sample projects.  It  would seem the festive season is  coming at us like an express train...so I would like to slow things down a bit and  go through the actual seasons in the correct order...It is still technically British Summer time  after all....and  you can tell that from all the rain we've had this week!

So my offering is more autumnal because I fell in love with the new Woodland embossing folder and I can see this featuring in a lot of my makes - not only this autumn and winter, but all year round.

One of the things I really love about this particular folder is how it lends it to self to background brayering.

Both of these sample cards were made using plain white card.  I simply used the brayer to apply ink over the inside of the embossing folder before I ran it through the big shot machine. This gave the blue background and the stark white relief of the trees in the first card and  for the second card I loaded three shades of ink in yellow and orange shades to get a more graduated background. The possibilities are endless...

You could also opt to add ink to the embossed image after running it through the machine and use shades of browns and neutrals for a more natural tree effect. Going in afterwards with a marker or gel pen can highlight the marks on the bark too.

And of course it doesn't stop there. I added birds to these cards but butterflies, leaves, hearts, Christmas baubles or just about anything you like can be hung from the branches...you can leave it plain or add a simple sentiment... I just love it when my crafting goodies are so versatile and can really pay for themselves.

Anyhow that it is for now. Take care until next time,
Christa  xx