Falling Leaves Mixed media Plaque with Deb Riddell

Hello and happy fall!  It’s Deb here today to share with you my falling leaves mixed media plaque that I made for our current Fall challenge.  I used the cover from Southern Ridge Trading Company’s Fall Album along with some Pumpkin Leaves and Fall Leaves.

I’ve a few step out pictures on how I made it so grab a cup of your favourite fall beverage and read on.

I started by filling in the ring binding holes on the album cover with paper clay.  Once it had dried, I stippled the edges of the Fall Album frame with Americana acrylic paints in Dark Chocolate, Heritage Brick and a touch of Ebony Black with a stiff stencil brush.

Ranger Transparent Texture Paste was then applied to the unpainted areas of the album cover and to the chipboard leaves as I wanted to use Distress Crayons on these elements.  The Distress Crayons blend easier on surfaces that have been prepared with gesso or collage mediums and the transparent texture paste worked well also.

I coloured the prepared leaves and unpainted album areas with various colours of Distress Crayons, layering and blending the colours as I went.

After I was happy with the depth of colour, I sealed all of the chipboard elements with Satin varnish and then added a bit of silver and black embossing powder to the wheelbarrow and rake on the Fall album cover.

I backed the album cover with a piece of pale blue cardstock that I lightly stenciled with Tumbled Glass Distress ink through Southern Ridge’s Intersecting Circles stencil.

It’s very subtle and hard to see in the pictures but the swirls remind me of mare’s tail clouds that you often see high in the sky on a cool fall day!

More leaves were then die cut and punched from cardstock that I coloured with various shades of Distress inks in the colours of fall leaves.

I used a Recollections Oak Leaf punch and the leaf dies from the Sizzix/Tim Holtz Tiny Tattered Florals set.

The four chipboard leaves were adhered to the corners of the fall album cover and the cardstock leaves were scattered around all four sides.

I love the touch of metallic embossing on the wheelbarrow and rake.  I used Ranger’s Clear Embossing Ink pen, it allowed me to add the ink and embossing powder lightly to specific areas on the plaque.

You can also see some scratched lines on the tree in the picture above, I used a pin to add some ‘bark’ texture by lightly scratching through the layers of Distress Crayon, worked like a charm!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing a new way to use the wonderful chipboard albums available from Southern Ridge Trading Company.  I still have 9 more album pages left that I can use for other projects so it’s an amazing value for the money and who knows, I might even use some of them to make an actual album!

Southern Ridge Trading Co. Supplies Used:

- Fall Album

- Pumpkin Leaves

- Fall Leaves

- Intersecting Circles stencil

Other Supplies Used:

- Tim Holtz/Ranger Ink: Distress Crayons; Distress Ink; Transparent Matte Texture Paste; Clear Embossing Pen

- Tim Holtz/Sizzix: Tiny Tattered Florals die

- Recollections: Oak Leaf punch

- Deco Art: Americana Acrylic paint; Satin varnish

I hope you will join in our Fall Challenge.  You have a chance to win 4 designs from the online store - chipboard.ca - a $20.00 (before tax) retail value of YOUR OWN CHOOSING!  Can’t wait to see what you link up, happy creating!

Deb xo