Thankful for you

Hi friends!  I don't know about you, but I am super ready for the weekend!  I've been designated as the "drywall destroyer" in our basement this week, but I managed to sneak a little time in to craft too. 

I made this card with fall in mind, obviously.  The leaves are starting to turn here, I love it!  I started out with a brown card base and a piece of orange patterned paper from Recollections.  Then I layered some brown paper from DCWV over that (after wrapping some ribbon around it).

The leaf I chose was from Stretch your Imagination.  I went through a ton of cartridges looking at fall leaves.  It was kind of like Goldilocks- "this one's too plain, that one's too fancy" and then I found the one that was juuuuust right. It's the regular leaf, not the stretched one.

The sentiment is from Jaded Blossom's Thanksgiving Wishes stamp set.  I went through a ton of the brown paper scraps deciding between using my new gold embossing powder or my new gold ink.  I decided that for this card I liked the more dainty look of the ink rather than the embossing.  I'm still getting the hang of the heat embossing, and sometimes words are coming out looking kind of...chunky.

This card is being entered into the following challenges:
Bitten by the Bug 2- Fall leaves are falling (I don't have Art Philosophy)
Die Cuttin Divas- Use Brown
Simon Says Stamp- Wednesday Challenge, use a rubber or clear stamp