Water Color Leaves

If you read my last post, then you know how much I enjoy Autumn.  Today I had a few minutes, so I thought I would make a little stash of leaves to go with some stamping I hope to do this week.  These are really fun and rewarding because what looks like a mess turns out to be simply gorgeous!!

Supplies I used: water colors,  water color paper, cup of clean water, tiny leaf dies, Big Shot machine, silicone embossing mat, paint brush

                           

  Wet the paper with the water brush.  Randomly add splotches & squiggles of color in the Autumn shades you want on your card.  I used multi-color, but something with 4 or 5 shades of brown & red, or brown & yellow, even purple or hot pink work beautifully!

Just add watercolors until the paper is full and the splotches are random.  Use the paint brush to swirl the colors together.  Add additional splotches if it gets too bland for your taste.  To prevent the colors from becoming too muddy keep rinsing the brush so clean water is doing all the work.        

When you are satisfied allow the paper to dry and die cut.  Without removing the leaves from the die put them on the silicone mat and emboss on tab 1. Ta-da!!  They are finished for future project ideas :)


 

I cut my dies on a metal shim. It helps even the most intricate dies cut cleanly & costs about 1/3 of a precision base plate

Above are the cut leaves ready (face up) on the silicon mat ready for embossing. Sandwich them & run them.

Below are the embossed leaves, you can see how the veins in the die now stand out.











So that you can appreciate the difference, here is one of the leaves without the embossing