Crafting with Dragonflies Challenge 13

ED: I have been without internet for THREE days - not sure if it was due to the high winds and wild weather we have been experiencing but the internet line went down on Wednesday morning (or Tuesday night). Getting Telstra to do anything in a hurry is difficult as they have few technicians these days and all the call centres/help centres are overseas. Nice people but really hard to deal with when they are not here.....as a consequence, my posting is late! My fault - I left it to the last minute to do some correcting, and didn't schedule!

Firstly, a big warm welcome to our two new teamies at Crafting with Dragonflies 

Say hi to Sammy

and

and a big hello to Wynn

I know you will love their work. I do already!

Secondly, there is no sponsor this fortnight, so we can use our own images or stash! Sometimes that freedom is good and this is one of those times! Hilde is providing the prize for the winner and it is a surprise! 

Today, I am sharing a card for Crafting with Dragonflies - the theme for this challenge is trees/ leaves/create a scene: I have made two cards, one twice! I started off with a piece of SU shiny white card, and added some Tim Holtz Distress Ink of various colours in the yellow and greens.  I then used my sprays and sprayed the card to get a lovely shimmer going.  I then die cut out some leaves using a leaf die from a set by Marianne Creatables. I cut out lots of leaves, thinking I wouldn't use them all but I just kept adding and adding.....

I took a piece of SU Sahara Sand card, put it through the crimper, and created a corrugated card. I swiped around the edges of this with Baked Brown Sugar ink (SU), wrapped a piece of SU seam binding ribbon around it, and mounted it onto a piece of Crumb Bake (SU) , and then Pistachio Pudding (also SU). The whole was then placed onto a piece of folded card (SU Cherry Cobbler).  I stamped the sentiment, taken from an SU set called Sassy Salutations, using SU ink - Chocolate Chip. As I said I layered and layered up the leaves, trying to create a scene of them falling in the wind! We have had lots of wind here lately!

I was not that happy with it - before the maroon ribbon was added,  I had a new SU wide ribbon, in grey and brown tones, but it was too cool for the look I wanted, so removed that and added the other for some warmth. I tried to shape the leaves too for some dimension.

Here is the other one - which one do you like best? Not as many leaves on this one either. I was still not that happy, and so created another card for the challenge - but don't like this one much either - too busy or something.......

This stamp is from Crafty Individuals - 197

There is a lot of use of embossing powder going on here. I used up the rest of the treated shiny white card from the leaves - black, gold and white embossing powder was used for the various stamps, and I added Copics to the berries first, and some green to the white holly leaves. I used a Thinlit die cut from SU Merry - from gold card. The whole is layered onto some SU Gold card, and then onto some Cherry Cobbler (SU). I added some red Stickles to the berries to make them sparkle.

I would be interested to see what you think. My opinion is that this is too busy and the white EP is too stark.