Birthday Harvest

This is a lovely card that I made recently for a very good friend, using a technique that I learnt a few months ago.  This is Paint Fusion by Sheena Douglass, it's a mixture of traditional Folk art and stamping.  Ever since I first tried Paint Fusion I have wanted to produce artwork with the berries, and thanks to my daughter who bought the stamps and die set for my birthday I have.  This is my first attempt and I am very pleased with it.  I have used the Brambles perfect partners stamp and die set from Sheena, Pebeo Deco Matt acrylic paints, Kraft Card, Gesso paint, shrink plastic and other bits and pieces.  The background panel is a piece of Kraft card painted with a thin layer of Gesso, leaving most of the edges without paint.  When dry I used Vintage Photo Distress Ink on a piece of cut and dry foam to give a distressed look to the edges.  I then dragged the sponge down the panel a little way to give the effect of weathered wood.  This was repeated along the top and bottom edges.  Using the ink I stamped the leaves several times onto the panel.  I then painted them over the stamped images using the Paint Fusion technique, with my brush double loaded in green and white paint.  I die cut and embossed a sprig of leaves, then painted them in the same way. To create the berries I stamped them between the leaves, then putting some bright pink paint on my thumb I "printed" the base of each berry.  Next I used the rubber on the end of a pencil to "stamp" the individual cells of the berries in purple paint, some of the cells are solid and some are letting the pink underneath show through.  I used white paint to add highlights to the berries.  I watered down the green paint and added a hint of the pink to make a slightly browny-green for the stalks and the veins on the leaves.  I stamped the bramble corner image from Sheena's 'A Little Bit Magical Honesty' set in Versamark ink and heat embossed it in gold powder.  I stamped a sentiment onto white shrink plastic in sepia ink, cut it out and shrunk it.  I die cut another another sentiment from Kraft card and inked the edges of the letters.  The base card is white and I inked around the edges with Vintage Photo ink.  I attached the background panel to the base card, then added the die cut leaves to the panel with dimensional glue.  I also attached a sprig of die cut berries that were painted as before.  Both sentiments were attached with wet glue to complete the card.  This is a good 'worker' card that can be used for different occasions, male or female.