Just Treats for AHSC #284

Hello again, crafty friends!  Fall has officially started here in the middle of the USA and it's by far my favorite season.  Not only do I love the weather, the changing scenery, and the end of my seasonal allergies for a few months, but I really love the holidays!  So as soon as I saw this week's sketch at the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge blog, I knew I would use it for my first project featuring the September 2018 Stamp of the Month but I'm sure this set will see lots of use this holiday season.  Before we get to my project though, I just want to remind everyone that we love to see all of your AHSC sketch based projects too, and you have until 10:55 pm Eastern/9:55 pm Central on Sunday, 10/7/18, to link your artwork HERE.  Now let's get started!

details:  I really love the colors in this Grateful Hearts paper pack so I knew I wanted to pair it with the "thankful" sentiment from this set.  I started with a base of Pomegranate cardstock and this lovely multi-colored floral piece of patterned paper.  I flipped the sketch to suit my taste but otherwise stayed true to it, so that meant I needed three horizontal banners.  I chose to work with more Pomegranate as well as Goldrush and New England Ivy.  One of the things I love about this patterned paper is the watercolor look it incorporates, so to carry that look over to the banners I decided to use the traditional/darker color for each one as the base with a slightly smaller layer on top of each using the lighter shade.  When I had my banners cut out and was playing around with them, I was a little disappointed with how plain they looked so after some trial and error, I used Pomegranate, Goldrush, and New England Ivy inks with the retired Season of Thanks (D1604) background stamp set and I LOVED how that turned out!

For the centerpiece, I used the largest of the 4 Basic Circles Thin Cuts dies, which measured 3" in diameter, so the sentiment would completely fit inside it.  I stamped in Espresso pigment, covered the image in clear embossing powder and heat set it.  I then used the small round waterbrush and the "pick up" method to pick up Pomegranate, Goldrush, and New England Ivy inks from the inside of the lids of the stamp pads and transferred it to the lettering and "splash" or leaf effects on the stamped image.  I then used the retired Art Philosophy cartridge's image at 3 1/2" on both the dark and light shades of Espresso cardstock.  As I played around with placement before I adhered the pieces together, I thought the white circle/sentiment needed a little something more so I used a fingertip sponge dauber with traditional Espresso ink, and I'm really glad I tried that as I felt it really helped carry out the tone-on-tone kind of thing I had going with the banners.  

And that's all there is to this one, at least so far.  I haven't quite decided how I want to decorate the inside of the card but I do know I want to send or give it to my best friend of  *37 years* for Thanksgiving, just to let her and her family know how truly thankful I am to have them in my and my family's lives.  I really hope you can find time to play with this week's super versatile sketch and to also share it with us, we are thankful and blessed to have such a wonderful group of people sharing their talents and skills with us at AHSC.  

Thanks for stopping by and happy crafting!  ~~  Annette