Art Impressions Blog: Stenciled Golden Leaves and Ink Blended Background by Lynn Dionne

Happy Wednesday Ai Fans!!!

Watch video tutorial here!!!

Let's get started by creating a pretty fall background. To do this, we will first die-cut one of the Ai Banner Double Stitched Dies (5134) from some smooth white cardstock. Let's start with our lightest color which is the Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Ink in Scattered Straw, then blend in some Spiced Marmalade and finally some Crackling Campfire.

Now we will add some fluttering leaves using the Autumn Breeze Stencil. We are going to emboss the leaves with some gold embossing powder for a nice metallic look. In order to do this, we will lay the stencil over the ink blended background and using the Versamark Watermark Ink Pad and a foam applicator tool, we will pounce this ink onto the stencil. Now let's remove the stencil and add some gold embossing powder to the leaves. Using our heat tool, we can go ahead and emboss the leaves. This gives the leaves an elegant metallic shine! We will also spatter this panel with some gold metallic ink and now we have a beautiful fall sky!

Next, we will stamp and color our little squirrel using the adorable Ai Feast Mode (5191) Set. All of the coloring was done using the Zig Clean Color Real Brush Pens in the following colors: Blender, Sugared Almond Pink, Beige, Sand, Brown, Mid Brown, Lt Gray, Gray Brown. We can then fussy cut the image leaving a little white border all the way around.

Let's wrap this background with some natural hemp twine and tie a pretty bow! Now we will die-cut another stitched banner to create a nice border in a dark brown. We can add some foam mounting tape to this background banner and attach the two together.

We can now create our card base from some Kraft Cardsock which will also be spattered with gold as well. And on this card base we will stamp the sentiment from that same set which says, "Thankful for you".

Finally, let's glue these together and add a few sparkly gold gems!

Thank you so much for joining me today! Have a fun and crafty day!