Thankful * Grateful * Blessed

It's not quite Fall yet.  That, apparently, begins tomorrow, on September 22nd.  But from the look of the leaves around here and the nip in the air, Fall decided to begin early without permission.  Why am I talking about Fall?  That's the theme of our "Simply Stamping" challenge this week and our hostess, Gail Allen, provided the wonderful photograph of a previous Fall in her area.

Before we get started and I unveil my own creation for this challenge, I am going to give you a very quick run-down of what our expectations for this challenge are:

"Simply Stamping" is a return to basics.  We expect either one single stamped base layer or a base with one single layer on that.  We expect simple stamping.  You can use masking, heat embossing, stencilling, sponging.  You cannot use an embossing folder or embellishments or additional layers (not even a tag).

What our team discovered is that it's not very easy to stamp simply.  It remains one of our most difficult challenges.  I decided that I would use two layers.  My base is the Heavy Whisper White and then I added a layer of Whisper White upon which I did all my stamping, masking, detailing.  It took time, but I was so happy with the results.  Normally I would have stamped my sentiment on a separate piece of Whisper White and then popped it up on Dimensionals.  Well, that's not allowed so it became part of my masking challenge.  And it worked.

The stamp sets which I used for the fallen leaves are the Vintage Leaves set and the Rose Wonder set.  My sentiment is from the Paisleys & Posies set.  What I've done is to cut out several leaves as well as a rectangle the size of the white area for the sentiment and used those as needed to mask those already stamped areas which I did not wish to stamp over.  It was definitely time consuming.  Simply stamping isn't necessarily your fastest card technique.  But the results are very satisfying.  I'm happy with my card, unembellished and simply stamped as it is.

 The appearance of the additional layer of green behind the sentiment is precisely that, an appearance.  I've used a ruler and carefully coloured in that green area top and bottom to make it look matted.  I've also used the side of my marker along the edge of my layer of Whisper White to help the white stand out against the base white.

I hope you'll check out the wonderful "simply stamped" creations by the other Watercooler Artists at our Watercooler Wednesday Challenge.