Leaves are Falling!

**THIS IS MY SECOND POST TODAY AND IS A DUPICATE OF WHAT I POSTED ON SHE'S A SASSY LADY BLOG TODAY!! PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO SEE THE SKETCHES IN THYME CHALLENGE!!**

Good morning! I'm Barb and I am back again and happy to be guest designing on Sassy's blog!! With the change of seasons,  I thought it would be fun to use up some supplies that have been laying around and play with some new techniques!! Here is a sneak peek at what we are going to be making today....

Do you see the leaves with all the fall colors?! I'm going to show you how I made them! I started with some cheap photo paper I had laying around my office. I never liked how the photos looked when I printed them on this paper, yet I didn't feel like I could throw it out.... so why not use it?!

I pulled out some of my alcohol inks that I hardly ever use.. but that might change after doing this project because it was so much fun!! lol!! For my project I used butterscotch, cranberry, lettuce and  a little alcohol blending solution.

I started with my lightest color and worked my way to the darkest. I put a few drops of "butterscotch" on the pad of my Tim Holtz tool and started rubbing it across the paper. There is no right or wrong way to do this and you don't want it to look perfect. (On my first attempt I put the ink directly onto the photo paper but once I started rubbing it in, I was still left with little dots where I had originally put it on. I decided that putting it on the applicator pad was a much better way of doing it!!)

Next I added green (lettuce) to the same applicator and spread it over the yellow. After that I added in the cranberry. Note to self.... when using darker colors, you can use less ink!! A little goes a long way!! (In this photo you can see the cardboard box I used to protect my table top... be sure to put something under your paper when working with these inks!!!)

I wasn't happy with how the red looked on the paper... a little too bold and not blended enough. To solve this problem, I added a little Alcohol Blending Solution directly to the pad I had used for the other 3 colors and rubbed it over the top. It really did blend the inks together nicely!!

I made a second sheet using less reds and more greens... this way I would have some variety when I was ready to start cutting!

I cut the paper into smaller pieces and loaded it onto a cricut mat along with the brown that I was using for the background layer of the leaves.

I used my Gypsy to plan out where I was going to place everything. If you don't have a gypsy, design studio works just as well!!

Once the leaves were cut, I wanted to get rid of the white lines that were on the outside of the leaves from the paper. This was an easy problem to fix... ink!! I inked the edges of the leaves as well as the centers and I inked the brown background paper. In this photo you can see the difference between the one that was inked and the one that wasn't!

The last step was to glue the leaves onto their background layer and then use them in a layout! This is a layout I did of my daughter and her friend while raking leaves for a neighbor. I added in a few other premade embellishments and my layout was complete!

Thank you for taking the time to visit She's a Sassy Lady AND for reading this very long post!! Have a wonderful weekend!!

Barb  :)