The falling leaves drift by my window The falling leaves of red and gold . . .

Well, actually, they’re red, gold, orange and brown .. but I couldn’t think of a song that mentioned all those colours.

I don’t normally do multiple cards at once unless it’s Christmas, but I made these two cards on Saturday  . . .  well now that’s not entirely true.   I almost made two …  but I still had to decide what to do with the pure white card background behind the little girl with the umbrella.   Pure white just didn’t cut it.  So in the end I put in a pale, watery blue sky, and then below it I made it look like that fine, murky, misty, spray, wet you right through rain, so that it would suggest that this really was brolly weather. (brolly – a kind of shortening of word in the UK for Umbrella).

The papers used are all from Craftwork Cards.  I think it’s their Rose Heritage Range, if I remember correctly.  (It’s in my craftroom and I don’t want to make the trip across the decking, in the cold, and in my jammies – because the motion sensor lights will come on and that makes me feel like the last act of the night, [X-Factor?] … and like I should do a song, a dance and a bit of tap just to impress the judges.  It’s pretty paper and in a great variety of prints – which all ‘go’ together well.

The little girl is a stamped image, onto the white Stamping Card (by Clever Cut – aka Stamps Away), then stamped again onto the blue rosy paper and again onto the pink rosey paper.  Her hat and coat are cut from the blue paper.  Her boots and umbrella are cut from the pink paper.  Her scarf is something I added (it wasn’t part of the stamped image) as it kind of added a little movement to the image.

I added a little blue ric-rac ribbon and finished it off with a decorative frame of pink gingham.  (These can be found at The Works (UK only store) – in various sizes and shapes, all very cheaply – normally a pack of 6 totally different ones for around £1.  (sorry to folks outside the UK))

The second card is an Autumn card.  Although Autumn is meant to start at the beginning of September, (here in the UK)  but for me personally it doesn’t really feel like Autumn until October is here.  So when October the 1st arrived on Saturday my mind and heart was instantly switched on to Autumn.

I love the Autumn – the colours, the beautiful skies, the time to get out your warmer clothes and rake the leaves.  Children coming in from playing with little pink noses, as if they’d been pinched.  Hot drinking chocolate.  Snuggly, tucked in and that beautiful moment that it gets too cold in the house so you pop the heating on just to take the chill out of the air.  Yummy!

So … I made an Autumn card.  Not for anyone in particular, just because I wanted to.

The white scored and folded card is a gently hammered card in a lovely weight.  The dotty card is by Anna Marie Designs.  I stamped a ‘naked tree’ directly onto the card using memento ink pad and then stamped different leaves in different colours onto white stamping card, and then cut all the leaves out and coloured them in different colours.  I added just a few stamped leaves directly to the tree, just to give it a little depth.  The leaves were adhered to the tree using tiny double-sided sticky foam mounts, and I kept four stamped leaf images to one side so that I could use them as a pile of leaves …with one leaf being swept up and away by a gust of wind.

At this point, although I liked the card, it was missing a bit of the magic of Autumn, so I got my selection of WOW glitters out and chose three different colours.  An orange, a brown and a gold, and, using a glue pen with a fine nib, I added the various colours of glitters where I felt they should be.

The sentiment which I stamped onto the card is paler than I would normally have stamped it, but I wanted the tree to be the main event, so stamped the words, which read: Autumn…  the year’s last loveliest smile – in a soft brown.

Both of these cards were based on two cards I’d seen in a magazine quite some time ago.  I loved the originals and kind of stored them to memory.  They popped back into my head last week as I began to think about Autumn, so I scribbled myself a ‘post it note’ and stuck it to my big glass mat on my desk, to remind me to make them at the weekend.  I LOVE post it notes.  I don’t think I would I’d remember anything if it weren’t for post it notes!

So .. we have a new week and a new month  …  not only do I wish you a Happy Monday, I also wish you a Happy October.

Here are some facts about October that you might not know …

• The Anglo-Saxons called October Winterfylleth, meaning the ‘fullness’ of winter.
• The Welsh for October is Hydref (originally Hyddfref), a word signifying the lowing of cattle.
• The ‘October Revolution’ in Russia in 1917 took place in November, but at the time Russians had not yet changed from the Julian calendar.
• The Hunt For Red October, with Sean Connery, is the only film with ‘October’ in its title ever to win an Oscar (for best sound editing).
• More US presidents have been born in October than in any other month.

• October in the UK is the Awareness Month for Lupus, breast cancer, national cyber security and domestic violence.

• On 1 October 1982, the world’s first CD (Compact Disc) player went on sale. It was developed jointly by Sony, Philips and Polygram.

• In the US, October is National Pizza Month, Popcorn Month, Pork Month and Sausage Month.

• October is not mentioned in any Shakespeare play or sonnet.

• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869, in Porbander in western India.
• On 3 October 1906 the ‘SOS’ signal was established as an International Distress Signal by an agreement made between the British Marconi Society and the German Telefunk organisation at the Berlin Radio Conference. The signal was formally introduced on 1 July 1908.
• Also on the 3rd October,  in 1990 :  East and West Germany re-united and became one country.

I hope that October came into your home gently, and that as each day of this month comes along, it’s filled with little moments of happiness.

As Anne of Greengables (Anne Shirley)  said:  I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.  And I am.  October is one of my favourite colours.

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee with me.

Sending you love and an October sort of squidge, from me, to you.  ~