Leafy Layout

What a beautiful Fall day!  Here's a fun leafy layout to go with this gorgeous day.  We made this at our last Hostess Scrapbook Club Crop.

The color palette is taken right out of the Orchard Harvest DSP.  The leaves were cut with our new Autumn Accents leaf die.

We used a special technique on the leaves to make them really unique.  I think they look fabulous!
It's really simple to do it, too.  Here's how:

• You crumple the leaf --- a lot --- in your hand.  
• Open and crumple again several times.  You want a lot of creases and wrinkles.
• Spread it back out, but not too flat.
• Lightly pat it with the VersaMark pad.  
• Go around the outside edges lightly with the ink pad.  
• Emboss with gold EP.  It's gorgeous.

Tips:

• The lighter your touch with the ink pad, the better your leaf will look.  You want your leaf to look like it was brushed with gold, not dunked in gold.
• Lay your leaf in an old cake pan to emboss, so it won't scoot off your work surface while you're heating it.  This works for embossing any small pieces and keeps you from burning your fingers, too.
• Let your embossed leaf cool before picking it up.
• Attach the leaves with dimensionals and overlap them for a beautiful look to your project.
• You'll notice that I like to leave my layout open whenever possible.  This allows you more possibilities for  sizes and placement of your photos.

Here's another card I made using this same brushed gold technique for the leaves.  We made this one at my last Team Meeting ...  and here's another card I made with the Autumn Accents leaf die.

Have a great day.