Rustic Branches Revisited

Here comes July! It's time for another Papertrey Senior Team Design post. This month we're featuring Heather Nichols' stamp set called Rustic Branches. It's still a set that I reach for over and over again...and now it's fun to find new inspiration for some of these oldie but goody stamp sets.

My first bits of inspiration came from some photos I pinned to my Pinterest site. A simple search for berry wreaths brought me to these three favorites. They all are kind of rustic in nature and coincidentally all the wreaths have painted white washed/wood backgrounds. I loved this too so I decided to incorporate this look into my project for today.

from thebridecafe.tumblr.com

from Country Living

from moonlightrainbow.tumblr.com

My other source of inspiration for my project today came from a little nature walk to the timber behind our house. The reds discovered a huge thicket of blackberries a few years back and they let me know just this week that the berries are just starting to ripen up.
Those pretty, soft hints of pinks and purples and reds were the perfect, muted colors I was looking for.
Pretty soon the blackberries will be a deep purple color. I'm going to try my hand at some blackberry jam as soon as they're ready for picking. :)
Now on to my project for today. I have two fun techniques that I want to share with you today that I used on my card. First up I wanted to recreate that wonderful, white washed barn wood look. To do this I cut 4 strips of patterned paper about 1" wide and ran them my die cutting machine using the Woodgrain Impression Plate. I then sanded over the tops of the strips, used a little tea dye ink and then smudged on some Fresh Snow ink. The more sanding you do, the more muted the colors become. The second technique I used was to create some wreaths with muted tones. I was looking for those pretty pinks, purples and reds that you see with berries before they ripen to a deeper color. I happened across this great video from Shari Carroll where she rubs 3 colors of ink onto a craft mat, squishes her stamp into the ink, then spritzes with water before she stamped the images onto cardstock. It was the perfect inking technique I was looking for to get the muted, soft colors for the wreath. I also over stamped the twig wreath from Wreath For All Seasons onto the other wreaths.
Before assembling my card I spritzed some Fine Linen ribbon with spray inks and water to get a worn, rustic look. A little more stamping of the vine image onto the main card base finishes off the card front. My wreath image was stamped with words from Rustic Branches and then was cut with a circle Nestabilities die.
Here you can see my finished card.

At this angle you can see the wood grain impression and sanding a bit better. Hello juicy little berry.
And here you can zoom in on the wreath image. Very watercolor looking with soft, muted colors.
Hope you enjoy.....a nice little birthday card for someone special is checked off the list. :)

For more inspiration using Rustic Branches, be sure to check out Nichole + the other Senior Team posts here:

• Nichole Heady
• Heather Nichols
• Dawn McVey
• Lisa Johnson
• Betsy Veldman