Around the World on Wednesday: This or That

Can you believe it’s November already?

This month’s Around the World on Wednesday Blog hop Theme is This or That: Wrapped in Gratitude taking special inspiration from the beautiful creations of team member, Sharon Burkert.

I chose to take inspiration from this colorful Halloween card of Sharon’s that features the Party Alphabet Dies:

The dies are new to me and I thought it would be fun to use the pumpkin and vine theme with them. Since I’m going for a fall gratefulness theme I worked with the big dies and Beautiful Pumpkin Bundle. I also used the Gathering Moments fall images and even pulled in a tag and greeting from the Layers of Beauty bundle. These are big dies, big enough to actually stamp on the die cuts. There are also so big that I knew my card would be a slim line card just to get the word “THANK” on it.

• I started by stamping the rather fall like botanical images from Gathering Moments along one long side of a sheet of Very Vanilla card stock. I used Old Olive, Pecan Pie, Berry Burst. I wanted to pull in a darker echo of Sharon’s Petunia Pop and I like the way this puts a little twist on the more traditional colors. There is a bit of Cajun Craze with the mushroom image too.
• The next time I try this I might just die cut the letters first and then stamp as I needed to add more images to the die cuts anyway.
• Once I had the stamping on the letters done I put them all into Birch Wood embossing folder to add a bit of texture.
• After trying a few embossed designs on the Pecan Pie layer, I decided this would look better just plain. I used a ruler to make a straight ledge to line up the letters and stated with the “A” in the middle and work out to the edges. After the fact I decided to push this a little more in the shabby chic direction by lightly brushing the letters with just a touch of Pecan Pie and roughing up the corners.
• I tried adding a Pumpkin Pie or Cajun Craze pumpkin but in the end decided to play up the Berry Burst a little more. The image is stamped in Cajun Craze on Berry Burst card stock and then it was brushed with a little more Berry Burst after die cutting it. I like the vintage velvety look this gave it and actually ordered this bundle because I thought it would be fun to do some non-traditional pumpkins. The pumpkin vines/leaves were ie cut with Beautiful Pumpkins Dies out of Old Olive card stock and them brushed with a little Pecan Pie around the edges. Before attaching the Pecan Pie layer (3 1/4″ x 8 1/2″) to Berry Burst (3 3/8″ x 8 5/8″) I brushed those edges too.
• Before attaching this all to the 3 5/8″ x 8 7/8″ Old Olive card baseI tied some linen thread around the THANKS layer and added a “you” tag made with the Layered with Beauty Bundle.

Here is a close up of the pumpkin:

This was a really fun first go at these alphabet dies and I look forward to playing with them again soon.

I’m trying to prep for two back to back trips amid the uncertainty of US air travel right now so I ended up skipping my planned second card. – I was going tweak the colors for a less shabby chic look. But that means you get to move on to see what you will see with the others on this hop. I can’t wait to see what Teri West has in store for us.

Jan Clothier – NZ
Leonie Stuart – AU
Rochelle Laird-Smith – AU
Cheryll Miller – AU
Danielle Kassing – NL
Marga Bultena – NL
Aurélie Fabre – FR
Kelly Taranto – US
Sharon Hashimoto Burkert
Chris Smith – US
Teri West – US

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you enjoy the blog hop!