Changing Leaves

One of the things I love about paper crafting is the freedom to “color outside the lines”…meaning I can choose color combos, layouts, patterns, and embellishments that make my heart happy. It doesn’t have to be realistic which is a relief, because I think leaves look great stamped in blue!

When I saw the new Changing Leaves bundle from Stampin’ Up! I immediately went to one of my favorite color combos - Pool Party, Lost Lagoon, and Night of Navy. I just love a good navy blue with teal combo.

The biggest stamp in the set worked great for some ombre ink stamping.

My video tutorial on YouTube goes into detail showing how to do ombre inking. It’s a really quick, easy technique that packs a lot of visual punch!

You can watch the video tutorial here:

Here are the supplies I used for this project:

• Changing Leaves bundle

• Ink pads in Night of Navy, Lost Lagoon, and Pool Party

• Cardstock:

  • Basic white, cut at 5.5” x 8.5”, scored at 4.25” along the 8.5” side

  • Basic white panel, 5.5” x 3.5”

  • Basic white scrap to die cut the long oval for the sentiment

  • Night of Navy panel, 5.5” x 4”

  • Night of Navy scrap to die cut circle element

• Basic Iridescent Adhesive-Backed Pearls

• Sponge daubers

• Stampin’ Dimensionals, both regular and mini

• Glue

• Acrylic block or stamp positioning tool

To create the ombre inking on the leaf, I inked the entire leaf stamp with the Pool Party ink pad. I then used a sponge dauber to pick up ink from the Lost Lagoon ink pad and dabbed it onto the stamp over the middle third of each leaf. Then I used another dauber to pick up Night of Navy ink from the ink pad and dabbed it onto the bottom third of each leaf and the stems. Finally, I used a third sponge dauber and went straight to the top third of each leaf that just had Pool Party ink, and dabbed it over that portion of each leaf to even out the ink.

When it was all inked up, I stamped the leaf onto the lower section of my white card stock panel, with part of the leaf hanging off the edge. I made sure to protect my desk surface with a piece of copy paper. After cleaning my stamp, I repeated the inking process and stamped the leaf image again, this time coming down from the top of the white panel.

I stamped my sentiment with Night of Navy ink onto the long narrow white die cut oval.

After the stamping was complete, I assembled my card. I glued the Night of Navy panel directly to my card base and then used dimensionals to center the stamped white panel from left to right over the navy panel. I again used dimensionals under the navy circle piece and adhered that to the lower right portion of my card front and used both dimensionals and glue to overlap the white sentiment strip to the card front and blue circle.

I topped it off white three adhesive pearls and my card was done!

It may look more complicated than it really is. This is a very easy technique that comes together quickly. I hope you give it a try! If you do, I hope you tag me in your social medias so I can see what you created!

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After I started playing with this bundle, the ideas just kept coming. And honestly, I have a few more things I still want to try.

The unique thing about this bundle is that, it not only is a great versatile stamp set, but it also comes with dies and an embossing folder. In fact, the dies and folder work together as a “Cut and Emboss” system.

This means the main die fits inside the embossing folder, which allows you to both emboss and die cut the three main leaves in the set - at the same time! So cool!

This feature provides so many more options of ways to use this set.

If you catch my entire video, you’ll see that in part 3, I shared lots of ways to use the products, either alone or combined together.

Then at the very end I shared several more projects that I created using the bundle. This includes a few more cards, a gift tag and a scrapbook layout. This bundle made it so easy to QUICKLY create projects that look amazing.

Here are some pictures of the additional projects I created.

You really can’t go wrong adding this bundle to your crafty inventory. I think it could work for any occasion year-round, in traditional colors or in your favorite color combo!

As always, if you have any questions about the products, techniques or projects, or just want to connect, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at leahfayehandmade@gmail.com.

Have a great rest of your day!