Hello my stampin’ friends! I hope your week is going well! Today I wanted to incorporate two challenges into one card: The Paper Players theme challenge of trees or leaves and my FSJ team color challenge.

Measurements:

• Lemongrass Card Base 4 1/4″ x 11″ scored at 5 1/2″
• Citrus Cooler Layer 3 7/8″ x 5 1/8″
• Butter Cream Layer 3 3/4″ x 5″

Details:

• The color challenge was to use 3 of 5 colors and I used 4 of the 5: Butter Cream, Citrus Cooler, Sweet Pear (my fav color) and Lemongrass.

• I was quite literal with the leaves or tree challenge and chose to use FSJ’s Fresh Foliage stamp set. Coordinating dies are available but today I just used the stamps. Isn’t the way they have built the shading into the stamp set amazing?

• The first image stamped was this gorgeous thank you sentiment from the ATS set ‘Many Thanks’ on to Butter Cream card stock. Such a gorgeous font!

• I inked up two mirror image stamps in Sweet Pear and stamped them around the sentiment, using my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig as my placement guide.
• I then pulled out my Lemongrass ink pad and a blender pen. I used the blender pen to pick up the ink directly from the ink pad and then colored each leaf on the stamp, staying toward the bottom of each leaf. I also inked up all of the stems. Then I used a dauber to pounce on the inked stamp, pulling some of the color back up. I then stamped directly over my Sweet Pear stamped images, creating soft shading of the leaves and stems.

• I needed to add Citrus Cooler to my design but wasn’t satisfied with the options I had in the ‘Fresh Foliage’ stamp set so I pulled out ‘Harvest Wreath’ and found this itty bitty dotted stamp. I played around with full color stamping and then stamping off once, but first the color was too dark, and then it was too light (Goldilocks here) but then I found a combination that was JUST right. lol. I inked up the little stamp in Citrus Cooler and then stamped it into the dauber sponge before stamping on to my card front. Perfect!!

• I layered the card front onto Citrus Cooler card stock, added a 3 1/2″ x 4 3/4″ piece of white craft foam to pop it up, and adhered the card front to the Lemongrass card base.
• I wanted to add more to my design but every embellishment I chose overwhelmed the design. I finally added Wink of Stella to the Citrus Cooler dot images and then went over that with Journey Glaze. It is SUCH good stuff…I can’t believe I stamped for eight years without it!!
• I left the card to dry overnight and came back but it still wasn’t enough so I colored all of the Lemongrass parts of the leaves with Wink of Stella. THAT was the perfect finishing touch. I can see just a bit of the shine in the photo but in person, the whole card sparkles. So happy!

• I stamped another stamp from the ‘Many Thanks’ ATS set on the inside and called it good.
• Since I didn’t have any FSJ pattern paper that used these colors, I just went through my pattern paper stash until I found one that matches amazing well and used that to line the envelope.

This was such fun to create and I thank The Paper Players design team for giving me the inspiration!

Have a great day! I hope you get to do something crafty today! P.S. I love to hear from you so please leave a comment if you can! Thanks so much for stopping by!!