Hello there. I’ve been playing with lots of new products recently so decided it was time to dig back into my stash and find a stamp set I hadn’t used for some time – meet the ‘ginkgo spray’! I pulled together a couple challenges for inspiration on this one, taking the left hand column on TicTacToe‘s grid and the ‘autumn’ theme from The Paper Players

I started by creating an embedded frame on the front of a 5×5 card blank. I used two embedders for this, one of the new ‘nested square’ set with one of the original squares as they just had a small difference in size. I started with the larger one on the inside of the card and embossed it from the front, then sat the smaller one within it on the card front and embossed that from the inside, giving me a lovely raised frame. I ran low tack tape aoround the frame to protect it and lightly blended ‘dried marigold’ and ‘specked egg’ Distress Oxides into the centre of the card.

I stamped the ‘ginkgo spray’ over the inked area using ‘shadow grey’ Archival ink and then coloured the leaves with Pergaliner pencils, using a blending nib to smooth out the tones.

I added a shadow below the leaves using grey Polychromo pencils, then finished with a small twine bow on the gingko stems and a word sticker that I’d edged with a black Sharpie.

And in case you want to know how I decided what colours to use, here’s a picture I found of a ginkgo leaf in all it’s autumn glory!