it's finally here!

As I write this tonight, it's actually cool enough to have the windows open and today it was beautifully cool for our area. Yahoo! I guess all my fall cards have made an impact--tee, hee! Today's post is a large 5x7 card for a male co-worker's birthday. I really like how the colors turned out--it took me awhile because they were out of my usual zone but I like the combination. I was inspired by this card over on the fabulous Nancy Riley's blog. I loved her use of the {in colors} and the Season of Friendship stamp has long been a favorite. The main panel is stamped with the Season of Friendship (#111776) tree in soft suede ink. I stamped the little tri-bunch of leaves all over the tree to fill it out with autumn color. I intended to stamp just a few leaves but I was not happy with it and as I added more and more, I came to a point where I realized that I liked the full look of it and just kept going! There might be one too many but you know how hard it is to know when to say "when"! LOL! The leaves are inked up in crushed curry, dusty durango, rich razzleberry & just for good measure...kiwi kiss (retired) makes a return appearance. Has it been hard for you not to use kiwi kiss too?! The tree is partially matted with some dusy durango cardstock attached on dimensionals to a larger mat of rich razzleberry that was stamped with the Sanded background stamp (#109294) in soft suede. I stumbled for awhile longer (sometimes it just takes me FOREVER!) over where to put the sentiment and I ended up using the Teeny Tiny Wishes set (#115370) popped out with the Word Window punch (#105090) and attached to a Modern Label (#116630) of crushed curry. I just love how the Word Window fits perfectly on top of the Modern Label punch! I punched a small hole in each end of the modern label and using some hemp twine "tied" the sentiment onto the card. Oh, I almost forgot the inside! A couple pieces of light cardstock are a must to line the inside of a dark card base and it provides the perfect blank canvas to carry over a little bit of the front image on the inside. I think stamping a matching or coordinating image on the inside just adds a little professional touch, don't you? I'm pleased with the results and hope you are too...thanks for looking.

Supplies:
stamps: season of friendship, sanded background, teeny tiny wishes
ink: soft suede, crushed curry, rich razzleberry, dusty durango, kiwi kiss
paper: very vanilla, soft suede, dusty durango, rich razzleberry cardstock
extras: word window, modern label, and 1 1/16 circle punches, hemp twine