Autumn Tree with Dimensional Flowers Tutorial

Hi crafters! I hope your weekend was a good one. We had a fun weekend with soccer, a birthday party for one of my friends and a really long walk. The weather is starting to turn and although the days are still pretty warm, the nights are getting cooler. 

This week at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog we have a Fall/Autumn theme. Don't miss the last project of our wonderful August guest designer Anne Redfern.

I made an autumn themed birthday card, which started out as an art journal page. I was in the mood for some dimensional flowers, and I try to keep my art journal pages as flat as possible, so I turned it into a big card instead.

I found the background in my box of scrap papers and it was perfect for an autumn project. I might have made it when working on this Watercolor Tree Art Journal page. The clouds were done with Distress Micro Glaze before painting the background with watercolors. The glaze resists the paint.

I used the Simon Says Stamp Brushed Branches as my focal point. I love this stamp. It was inked with a combination of ink pads and markers. It is a big stamp, and I used one of my Sizzix Cutting Pads as an acrylic block. Mist with water before stamping.

The flowers and foliage were made with Tim Holtz Funky Floral 3 Thinlits set. The Funky Floral sets are so versatile and you can make an almost unlimited variation of flowers with them. I colored watercolor paper with Distress Inks and let it dry before die cutting the pieces. It helps to use the Sizzix Precision Base Plate with these intricate dies. The red paper was in my scrapbox and had been stamped with various stamps.

Use the new Sizzix Paper Sculpting tool kit to give shape and life to the flowers and leaves.

Layer the flower pieces to create dimensional flowers and glue them to the card. I added a piece of burlap and twine below the flowers. Tuck the leaves in all around.

I also glued some sequins among the flower, for a touch of bling.

Here you can see the resist effect of the micro glace. It also resist the stamping, so that it looks like the tree fades out in some areas. The birds were stamped with Faded Jeans ink.

The Brushed Branches stamp looks great with the watercolor stamping technique. If you want to see more examples using it, check out my Guestbook tutorial.

The sentiment stamp comes from the SSS Big Greetings set.

Here you can see that the inky red paper I die cut some of the flowers from, already had some stamping up. It was a full sheet that I had inked and stamped to use on projects. I need to do that more often, because it is very handy, especially if you are in a hurry.

Here's another look at the dimensional autumn flowers. If you don't want to do an autumn project, just use different colors.

I hope you will join us this week in our Fall/Autumn challenge. As always, you have a chance to win a $50 gift voucher to do some fun shopping at Simon Says Stamp. You have until next Monday 8am Ohio time. 1pm UK time, 2 pm CET to join in.

Don't forget to follow Simon Says Stamp on Instagram, they post great stuff daily. 

Do you use Instagram? If so please add #sssmchallenge so we can see your entries there too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my blog today!  

Happy crafting!

Anna-Karin

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