Changing Leaves are the Flowers of Autumn

I LOVE AUTUMN! Cooler temperatures, the smell of wood burning, the need for long sleeves and pants, apple picking, and the beauty of the changing leaves give me cause to smile. This card was my attempt to capture some of that on paper.

I reached for the Season of Friendship stamp set and stamped the tree in Soft Suede on Very Vanilla card stock. I chose More Mustard for the leaves and filled the tree with them. THEN came the fun addition behind the title of this post: flower shaped buttons!

Each SU! color collection features Designer Buttons in three sizes, and these little flowers are just too cute for words! They come in Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Elegant Eggplant, Cajun Craze, More Mustard, and Not Quite Navy (not shown) in the Regals Collection, a perfect combination to depict Fall. I tied Hemp Twine through the holes and mounted them on the tree using Mini Glue Dots.

Then I decided to add a few leaves in each of the colors to give the tree a bit more contrast and interest. I used the same colors as the buttons, and of course they matched perfectly! Love that!

I wanted a unique fold for this card, so I went with the joy fold. Mine is adapted from what I saw on splitcoaststampers. I used Always Artichoke as my base, and secured an Antique Brad to the Very Vanilla layer so that the strip with the sentiment would have something to tuck under to anchor it.

When the card opens, there's a piece of Very Vanilla for writing (my husband's suggestion). It also covers part of the anchor strip for the sentiment, which is good.

This is a little plain and I think it could use something. Any suggestions? Perhaps some ribbon along the right side? I don't want anything too distracting from the main image, but just a bit more snaz.

Is anyone really experiencing Autumn yet? It's still warm here, but we had a taste of cooler temperatures over the weekend. It was blissful! Just a few short weeks and it will be here.