"fallen leaves"

I had fallen in love with the Tim Holtz stamp set "Falling Leaves" at first sight, so when I finally had it in hands, it came as a surprise to me that I absolutely did not know which project to do with it, that would show the whole potential of these gorgeous images...

It took me some days to find an appropiate approach. I stamped, cut out, inked ....and discarded. Then I had the idea, that instead of the leaves, that should look like they had fallen on the ground, the paper they were stamped on should take their place instead and look like a pile of fallen leaves...with pictures of fallen leaves on them. AND I thought it the perfect project to do my very first inchies.

This card is the outcome of a lot of stamping, cutting stencils, searching for exact positions, sparkling and inking:

I combined 1 and 2 inch inchies for the project, which was very helpful to fill the "gaps" that had developed after I had stamped the three big leaves onto the five big inchies (which was quite tricky I have to admit).

After I had all my inchies covered with my puzzle of leaves, I inked the edges with Distress ink "peeled paint" and gave them a spritz with water from my fingers to get some texture, that should contrast the fine details of the stamped leaves images. Then I inked the edges with "pumice stone", which I also used as the background colour for the card. The border once again was treated with "peeled paint" (stamped small leaves AND inking with blending tool) to get a frame-like look. The letters from the Hero Arts stamp set were stamped with "black soot" after I had glued some of the tiles directly onto the card, some with foam sticky pads on top to create some depth.

Hope, the pictures show some of the threedimensional pile-of-leaves-look!

With this project I enter the challenge at City Crafter Challenge Blog, where they ask to use inchies. Well, I did! Inchie-leaves, to be exact. ;)