Autumnal Colours - Oak House Studio September Challenge

Hello, today I'm sharing a card I have made for the Oak House Studio September Challenge, the Theme is Autumnal colours.  (As always the materials list and links are at the end of the post).

Lately I have been playing again with Gap Cards, they have always fascinated me and I thought it would be nice to incorporate a subtle gap element to set off some lovely floral stamps from Oak House Studio.

I first needed to create a background for my card.  I chose papermill Ivory Smooth card and randomly blended distress inks in 3 colours across it (Spiced Marmalade, Tea Dye, and Squeezed lemonade), spritzing and working with water to help blend.  (I don't have any Oak House Studio inks at the moment but they are very much on my wish list).  I then over stamped this piece using one of the flowers from the 'Flowers and Circles' stamp set, and stamping with all three of the distress ink colours used on the background.

 I scored and folded papermill Mocha Brown card to make a card base and removed a strip of card from the front to create the 'gap'. The finished stamped background was then cut to shape to fit onto the front panels of my card front.  I did ink around each panel with 'Tea Dye' to add definition before fixing the panels to the front with double sided tape

Now to create the focal point and means to hold the card together.  For this I chose 2 of the flowers from the 'Flowers and Circles' stamp set.  Stamping them with gilding glue onto Mocha Brown card, and then gilding with flakes and burnishing to remove the excess.  These gilded flower heads were then carefully die-cut into circles and 3D foam mounted onto larger circles.  These larger circles were punched from Ivory Smooth card and then inked with 'Tea Dye'.  Carefully positioning these 3 circles to span the 'gap' and also hold the card together by using cosmic shimmer glue on the parts that overlap the card panels.  Hopefully I managed to evenly space the circles too. I then created a sentiment by again stamping with gilding glue and gilding as before onto 'Mocha Brown' card.  I chose to use 'Best Wishes' which is from the 'Script Sentiments' stamp set, a really useful set too as the font is lovely and the sentiments cover all occasions.  The finished sentiment was die-cut into a tag shape, matted onto 'Tea Dye' coloured Ivory Smooth card to create a layered tag shape.  A double bow of cream and brown paper twine and a small pale orange faux gem provide the finishing touches.

 I really like how this card experiment has turned out.  The stamps of course stamp out beautifully and first time too, which is really important, especially if using glue and flakes, you know you can rely on them stamping evenly and so no waste. I can highly recommend Oak House Studio stamps and my wish list keeps getting longer.  If you've not tried them before, then why not pop over to their Blog or facebook page to find out more, perhaps you may even be inspired to enter their regular challenges too. 

**Update, so thrilled that this card was picked as a winner!!**




Materials List:
Flowers and Circles stamp set - Oak House Studio
Script Sentiments stamp set - Oak House Studio
Ivory Smooth Card - Papermill Direct
Mocha Brown Card - Papermill Direct
'Brighton Pier' Gilding Flakes - Indigoblu
Gilding Glue - Imagination Crafts
brown and cream paper twines
Small pale orange faux gems