Sponging Leaves to give a Vintage Look

How to Sponge Leaves using Daubers to give an aged, Vintage Look

These leaves are perfect for your Fall cards & projects – including using them to decorate your Thanksgiving table and you can even use them to make a beautiful wreath.

Here is my tutorial – at the end of this tutorial you will find a printable version too so that you can print it out and keep it for reference.

Supplies needed:

127812 Autumn Accents Bigz Die
Big Shot
Cardstocks in autumnal colors
Inks
Daubers or sponges

Firstly use the Autumn Accents Bigz Die and your die cutting machine to cut leaves in the cardstock colors of your choice – for my leaves above, I used Crushed Curry, Cajun Craze and Soft Suede.

If you wish to do so, stamp a pattern onto the leaves – or you can leave them as is – I used the background stamp En Francais on my leaves

Now to do the Sponging…

Take your leaf and tap your sponge or dauber onto your ink pad – I am using Cajun Craze ink for my leaf…

Hold your leaf in one hand and with the other, start dabbing that ink onto the edge of your leaf, working in a circular motion…

Until you have gone all the way around once…

And then move in from the edge and go around again – don’t worry if your coverage is patchy – this just adds to the vintage look…

And this is what your leaf will look like when you have gone around again – I added a little color to the center but want that yellow to shine through to give a central focal point – and you can also go ahead and touch up any areas that need a bit more color…

You are going to put another color just on the edge of the leaf to make it pop – for this I am using Early Espresso ink…

Just as you did before, dab your dauber into the ink and start moving around the leaf but this time keep to the very edge of your leaf so that you get that nice defining edge…

And once you have gone all the way around, this is what you will have…
Isn’t that gorgeous? Have fun making your own leaves and experimenting with colors!