Thank You With a Set of Cards

I used the card above as a Thank You to the woman who was subbing for me while I was out.  I included a gift card because I know how crazy the start of school is and she did not know what she was getting into when she agreed to cover for me.  

 Secret ingredient - the pumpkins were die cut from a box of pumpkin bread I had purchase at Trader Joe's.  I made muffins out of the mix and they were so delicious that HWNSNBP and I went back for a couple more boxes and they had changed the box.  (Or maybe, now that I'm thinking of it, the box I first bought was a leftover from last year.  But I do always check the sell-by date and it was not yet expired.)  I used some woodgrain dsp for the stems.  

Then I set about to make a set of notecards for her.  I chose to use the Wondrous Wreath stamps and dies and changed it up to encompass the seasons.  

This is a two step stamp.  For example let's look at the card above.  I used the first stamp in the lightest color - Daffodil Delight. Then the second stamp, which only consists of accent leaves is stamped over the first image in a darker color.  Try as I might I could not get these to cover exactly over the first image so I took a marker in the darker color and just added some highlights to the leaves covering up the yellow shadows that were peaking out.  I liked the way that those leaves looked with the highlights so much that I had to go back with the lighter marker on the lighter leaves.  I'm always making so much more work than necessary, but I do like the way they came out.

On the card below, not only did I stamp over the lighter green leaves with Crumb Cake, but then I took a Micron marker and attempted to make the darker leaves look like pine cones.  They might not exactly appear to be pine cones, but maybe another type of organic addition.  The berries on this were embossed with gold EP and that bow is cut from Brushed Gold cs with a gold glitter paper star.

The base of this card was first stamped with the flourish from Everything Eleanor and embossed in white.  The berries on the wreath are also embossed in white and it has a punched red glitter heart.

You can see that I added some sticky pearls to the centers of the punched flowers below.

I made three of each and packaged up two of each for her and kept one set for myself.  The insides are blank so they can be used for pretty much any occasion.  

And just for a bit of whimsy in this post - an "Oreo" cow that we spotted on our way back from Trader Joe's.