Sometimes you feel a little bit pleased with yourself when you make a card that turns out better than you expected and this card is one of those! I wasn’t really exactly sure what I was going to do with this stamp and probably expected to make a less colorful card. When I saw this paper I decided it would be a card for fall with the autumn colors.

This stamp is from the Nature’s Beauty Stamp Set, found on the inside of the last page of the Holiday Catalog. You might not have even noticed it way back there, but there is something important about this stamp set! Stampin’ Up! is donating $3 of every sale to mental health organizations. So while you can have fun stamping and using this set, you will know you are making a difference in the lives of others.

I stamped the deer in Memento Black Ink because I knew I would color him in with my Stampin’ Blends markers. That led to coloring in the sky a little bit with about three different colors. When you do this, when you start out it looks like you are making a scribbly mess! But just keep going and as the colors blend together it will likely turn out fine. I started with just kind of scribbling in with Balmy Blue Light, then some Pumpkin Pie Light, and some Gray Granite Light. As I said, it looks like the sky is going to not turn out, but then it does. I really like the way it looks now! You can experiment with whatever colors you have or you like.

The deer is colored with the Crumb Cake markers and maybe I added a bit of Soft Suede. After I stamped the deer on the Whisper White piece of cardstock, I stamped again on a piece of scrap paper, then cut it out just inside the stamped lines. This gave me a “mask” to place directly over the deer to I could stamp the trees on each side of him without stamping over the deer. To stamp the trees, I used my Stampin’ Write Markers, two colors of green on the leaves and then a dark brown for the trunk and a few branches. I colored directly on the stamp so I could have the greens on the leaves and the brown on the tree trunk. The grass I colored the same way as the sky with just a couple of green shades.

The designer paper is from the Come To Gather Designer Series Paper. When I saw this orangish paper with the colored and outlined leaves I knew it would be perfect with the deer. The greeting is stamped in Early Espresso Ink on Whisper White that is sponged a little bit around the edges with Crumb Cake Ink and layered on a piece of Crumb Cake Cardstock. Both the die-cut shapes are from the Ornate Frames Dies. The greeting is in the Gather Together Stamp Set.

The card base is Crumb Cake with layers of Pumpkin Pie Cardstock. Even though Pumpkin Pie is not one of the coordinating colors with this designer paper, I thought it looked good on the card and brought out some of the lighter orange colors.

You could send this card to someone any time from now on through Thanksgiving. It would make a great masculine birthday card or just a card with a note inside, also.

Consider putting this stamp set, Nature’s Beauty, on your order and know that you and your stamping may be a part of helping someone.

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