A Dazzling Autumn with New Top Dog Dies!

Happy Wednesday, Everyone!

We are having some gorgeous fall weather here in St Louis- this is my favorite time of year, what with its cool nights, gorgeous colors and texture everywhere.  I think that is why I love fall challenges so much.

Monica at Add a Little Dazzle has some Ah-mazing inspiration for us for this week's Add a Little Dazzle Challenge, and it is all about fall.

 Gorgeous!  Just gorgeous!  The obvious choice here is to go with pumpkins, but believe it or not, I have no pumpkin stamps.  I went with the next best thing and broke out my brand new, just released Top Dog Dies Fall Foliage Die Set.

I love the embossing on these leaves and took advantage of that when I grunged up my Add a Little Dazzle Outragousely Orange leaves.  While this is a CAS card, it still involved techniques to achieve this look.
The acorn is die cut from a piece of Brushed Bronze craft metal sheet.  I wanted a two toned acorn, so using a tiny swab and some alcohol, I removed the bronze coloring from the bottom half of the acorn.  Next, to give it a hint of color instead of being silver, I colored it with a Copic marker.
The leaves are from an Outrageously Orange craft metal sheet, but I wanted an earthly, weathered look to them;  I had discovered that if the metal was a little rough, liquid would settle into the depressions, so I ran the leaves through my Big Shot, orange side down on my very well used and scratched up cutting plate.  Then I brushed on a thin coat of gesso that had a small bit of Crumb Cake reinker mixed in to it.  Once the gesso was dry, I used a fine piece of steel wool and sanded each leaf, sanding down to the orange or silver color in some spots, and leaving the color and the gesso on the leaf in other spots.
To highlight the embossed veins of the leaves, I mixed in a bit of Early Espresso reinker and painted it along the veins.  Once dry, I again sanded some with the steel wool.  I molded the leaves to give them dimension; love being able to do that with the metal!
Seeing as the inspiration is not just that of a pumpkin, but of a beautiful table setting, I added a bit of white trim to the top and bottom of my image panel; I used one of the banners from the Top Dog Dies Banner #1 Die Set, die cut it from white cs and cut it in half lengthwise to get two decorative edges.  These bits of white represent the table linens.
I used the negative space of another brand new Top Dog Dies product, the Give Thanks word dies.  I LOVE these dies and they even come with a outline form for matting the words~

A little scoring and some Hemptique cord finish off this card. 

Now, I would love it if the creative mojo was flowing at all times, but sadly, that is not the case.  I got inspiration for my layout from Moxie Fab World this week; I used my fall foliage to represent the banners.  I love all of the white space on this sketch~

I am also linking up to Virginia's View, which is 'CAS' this month, Shopping Our Stash- 'It's the Most Colorful Time of the Year', and Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge blog-'Falling in Love with...'
 We hope that you can play along with us this week, for our inspiration challenge.  You do not have to use craft metal sheets, but if you have them we would love to seen them! 

Decided you just have to have your own Add a Little Dazzle craft metal sheets?  You can purchase them HERE.  I thank you in advance, as I get credit for your purchase! 

And to sweeten the deal, AALD is now offering FREE shipping on qualifying orders both in the US and internationally!  You can read more about shipping HERE.  No coupon is needed and all qualifying orders will automatically receive FREE shipping at checkout.  

Need to buy in bulk?  For all of the details, check out our BULK BUY PROGRAM HERE.  

Have a blessed week!

Lee Ann  :)