Lucky Seven at Karen's Doodles!

Gosh! Is it really Monday again? I'm sure someone stole last week, time is running by so quickly!

Wasn't last week's blog hop fun?  Thank you for all the wonderful comments you left - don't forget to check whether you were a winner, will you.

So here we are with our next Karen's Doodles Challenge. This week we need to see 7 (seven) of something - flowers, gems, buttons, ribbons, whatever you choose, just give us seven of them!  The Design Team have come up with some wonderful samples again, so be sure to stop by my Teamies' blogs and leave some love.

Karen has recently released a whole range of fantastic Fall images, which you can find here. I love them - I love Fall (autumn, here in the UK) in fact, the colours are so rich and beautiful.  So I though I'd celebrate the beginning of autumn (21st September) with my card this week:

Images: Karen's Doodles, 'Scarecrow Boy' and 'Pumpkins'

Paper: Scenic Route

I decided to use '7 of ' several things this week - if you look closely (and you can only see a little of the 7th one), there are 7 pumpkins, 7 pumpkin tops and, of course, 7 autumn leaves in the bottom right-hand corner.

I used two images this week - three, really, if you count adding Pumpkins twice.  With a little careful editing in Paint.net, I manged to get Scarecrow Boy to stand among several pumpkins! Of course, this then leaves a lot of background to cover and I was wondering how I could do this when I remembered Sandy Hulsart's tip for adding a gradient background.  I was so impressed with the background idea that Sandy used on her scarecrow card, that I decided to have a go at my own version.  Mine is a single-colour background and is probably easier seen in the close-up shot. I must say, Sandy, this is a great way to colour a big background on a scene such as this - hope you don't mind me stealing your idea! 

I think I've limited my palette a little too much on this one - I could have brightened things up a little but I really wanted the pumpkins/squashes to stand out and I feel I've really achieved that.  I love these images! 

Using my leave spray punch, I added leaves to the tops of the pumpkins for extra detail.  As the main image is so vibrant (with all that orange and the blue background!), I decided to keep the card quite minimal, so only covered half the card in DP, leaving the other half as plain kraft.  I then decided it looked too bare and cut out, marked, chalked and bent
7 autumn leaves to cluster one corner. 

So there you have it - my 7 things.  And now it's your turn. Use a Karen's Doodles image and show us your lucky 7. There will be three winners, as usual:


* 1st place winner of 3 digi stamps of your choice from Karen's Doodles will be awarded by merit. The Design Team members will vote for their favorite entry and the winner will also get a Card of the Week blinkie to display on their blog.

Both 2nd and 3rd place winners will be chosen by Random.org and the prizes will be:

* 2nd place winner - 2 Digi stamps of your choice from Karen's Doodles.
* 3rd place winner - 1 Digi stamp of your choice from Karen's Doodles.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

Happy crafting.
xx