Thanksgiving Joys

When I was going through my Thanksgiving images I wasn't sure how I was going to use this image from Dover Publications. Then when I received a shipment with tons of  brown packing paper wrapped around the item and saw in one of the decorating books where leaves where used for a decorative paper I knew.

On the card base I used the border from a frame stamp I bought at a thrift store near the top. The stamp ended up being larger than I make cards and so I've never used it. :-( I used red gold ink and it ended up being really subtle.

The background the image is on is from the brown packing paper. I gathered  leaves that were not dried up yet.   I first mixed metallic orange and copper paint and painted on the  leaves vein side.  I then painted some leaves with red which I mixed with the orange. With my brayer I smoothed the leaves down. I went ahead and overlapped the leaves. So it looks more like a pile of leaves than individual leaves. The packing paper was already wrinkled but after the paint was dried I crumpled it up into a ball and then unfolded it. Then with a cotton ball and vintage photo distress ink I rubbed ink on my background.

I have all of this ribbon that I seldom use so I decided to go ahead and glue ribbon for a border on three sides. I figured that adding ribbon this way would not add a lot of bulk to the card for mailing purposes.

I edged the image with red gold ink. I had taken the sentiment and cut an extra one of those out. I did not like the purple hue to it so used yellow and cinnamon chalk on it. Then I edged it with gold ink and pop dotted it on top of the sentiment on the image.

The leaves have all been raked up but hopefully I will be able to collect some more for another idea I have.

Alas I forgot to take my camera over to my son's house as I was going to post some pictures of Ali decorating a gourd for Halloween. Opps! I had forgotten to take a brush over for her to brush gesso on the gourd so she ended up using her fingers. I even got my son involved as I had him dry the gesso with their hair dryer. Anyway it is the scariest looking ghost gourd I've ever seen.

Wishing those who celebrate Halloween Happy Halloween! For the rest wishing you Happy Frugal Crafting till we meet again!