Hi friends! This past week went by in like five minutes! Wow! But, I'm so happy, because here we are at September! And I'm officially calling it Fall here on my blog! I LOVE FALL and live for it all year long! I am so happy to celebrate the next few months with pumpkins, coffee, apples, football, leaves….All that good stuff. Yeah! College football starts today too. And the weather has been perfect – cool nights and dark mornings…. Okay, yeah I'm excited! I've been Fall crafting for a couple of weeks already and that's going to continue. I hope everything is going great in your neck of the woods! Sending you some good wishes today.
I went back and pulled out some of my favorite dies from Taylored Expressions to create my apple cards to share today. These apple dies are PERFECT for Autumn cards and I chose to watercolor them with my favorite watercolor paints. This project started out with some water color playing… I just die cut some apples and enjoyed painting. Then later I turned them into two cards. Sometimes I begin with a card design already formed in my head, and sometimes I just color pieces and see what happens later. So, let's take a look at the cards! How do you like these apples??!! LOL.
No stamping on either of these cards today. Only die cuts and watercolors! I used a wet on wet watercolor technique to color the apples. Some red and one green one. I added in some deep golden yellow accents to the painting. The leaves were painted with three or four shades of greens. Apple leaves have that gorgeous deep green color. I colored the stems brown and then generously splattered gold paint over all of them.
This first card started with a white A2 card base. Then I chose some woodgrain paper from my stash and splattered it with gold Finetec paint. I LOOOOVE GOLD SPLATTERS! Lol. Can you tell? I die cut out the AUTUMN letters from a Taylored Expressions alphabet set. I painted those deep golden yellow. The rest of the card came together fast. I used foam tape to attach the apples to the card and clear glue to attach the letters. A piece of pretty twine at the top finished it off. Oh, and a few gold Doodlebug Sprinkles too! Simple and pretty.
Here's a close up of the leaves and painting!
I staggered the letters this way because they wouldn't fit across the card. It's kind of playful and fun this way though! Happy accident!
I turned the card for this photo so you can see all that yummy gold paint!! MMMMM.
Next up is another clean and simple design I made with the last apple die cut. I just bought the brand new Lawn Fawn Reverse Scalloped Circle Dies and wanted to use those! This is an A2 white card base layered with gingham from my stash. Then a pretty deep red layer die cut with the circle die. It creates the perfect frame for the apple! The 'hello' die cut is from Simon Says Stamp and I die cut it from watercolor paper (The same paper I used for the apples).
The red paper layer was attached to the card with foam tape – and the apple was also. I added some glitter sprinkles in red and gold. Because I like sparkly things!!
Near where I live we have an apple growing region called Apple Hill. It's only about 25 miles from our house and in the Fall it's so fun to go up and see the orchards, get apple donuts, see the arts and crafts and generally hang out in the fresh air. CLICK HERE to read about Apple Hill! The weather was sooooo fresh and nice when I woke up yesterday I got the idea to drive up to Apple Hill for a photo shoot and some donuts! This is the last few days before the crowds and craziness starts. I went up super early and guess what? I was the ONLY person there! Gosh, it was magic! I got the first batch of hot donuts (am I mentioning the donuts a lot?? LOL) and I had the whole place to myself. Up amongst the pine trees and the orchards. Here are some of the photos I took! Hope you enjoy them!
When you take pictures of things like fruit and flowers you really notice how many individual colors there are in them. I like to save this type of photo for reference when I'm using my Copic Markers or my watercolors. God is the master artist and no one paints like Him! I can try though! These apples were so pretty and you can actually smell them on the trees in the cool air. MMMM.
As a photographer, I am a life long student of light. Photographs are all about light… Not your camera or your photo editing software. LIGHT. Pure and simple, taking a picture is using the light to create something beautiful. The light changes with the seasons. Summer and Winter light is very strong and harsh and bright – with hard shadows. As we turn into Autumn, the light becomes warmer and a bit softer. I felt that yesterday – the coming of the light of Fall. AND I LOVE IT!
That's it for today! Have a super wonderful weekend! Labor Day Weekend! YAHOO! Are you doing something fun this weekend?? Tell me about it! I will be back on Wednesday as part of a fun celebratory blog hop! See you then! XOXO
