Stamp A Faire 2017--Lexi's Challenge: 9th Anniversary, Pottery

Lexi challenged us to create a pottery-inspired, clay/paper clay embellishment for the 9th anniversary.  I still had half a package of Creative Paper Clay in my stash from the baking theme Stamp A Faire a few years ago and pulled that out.  It seemed pretty dry and I thought I was going to have to toss it, but I added a little bit of water to it and that revitalized it to the point I could work it again.  So if you're in the same boat, try adding a bit of water to it before you throw it away!

I opted to do another fall project and used a small leaf image from Autumn Pumpkins to stamp all over the rolled out paper clay in Terracotta Tile and Orange Zest inks.  I vaguely recall seeing the cover of a Martha Stewart magazine several years go where leaves had been carved into a pumpkin and I thought it looked so pretty, so that was my inspiration.  Then I used the coordinating dies to trace and carve out paper clay pumpkins.  I noticed as the paper clay dried, the ink seemed to really fade out, so I went back after the clay had mostly dried and re-stamped the leaf images to bring the color back. I also stamped the green pumpkin stems at that point.

I die cut a vellum square and the pinked edge leaf patterned paper square from Limitless Layers 2.5" dies and a couple of vines from Winterberry dies and layered my clay pumpkins on top. I thought the vellum softened the patterned paper a bit and brought a little more attention back to the clay embellishments so they wouldn't get lost against the busy background.  I also used a couple of patterns from the Leaf Prints patterned paper collection for the background panel and the sentiment layer.  The sentiment is from Autumn Pumpkins.