Autumn Mousies

Hi folks,
Well, I'm sitting here in my living room, huddled next to the fireplace with a blanket...sure is funny how quick the weather can change at this time of the year!

The leaves have started to fall here, and they are so beautiful!  When I'm driving I have to remind myself to focus on the other cars, not the pretty leaves :-)  I felt inspired to play with some leaf images, and this one jumped out at me: 

This House Mouse stamp is a great image to colour since you can geet pretty artistic with the leaves, and despite that there's not too much detail to bog you down with.  The background is airbrushed with some grey, blue, and sand colour.  The leaf is cut out using a Spellbinders die cut which was then coloured with the airbrush.  In the top right hand corner I added a piece of chipboard from my stash which is coloured with my airbrush and some recycled canvas thread tied through.

I also decorated the inside, since I wanted to use an autumn sentiment, and there was no room on the front.  It sure does dress a card up when you decorate the inside!

The background is made using the faux letterpress technique, there is a tutorial on StampTV  here: "Inking a Cuttlebug Folder".

The sentiment is one from Heartfelt Creations, from the set called All Seasons Tree.  Added a bit of lace, and it was done!

I'm entering this card in the following challenges:
Sentimental Sundays - Autumn
Tuesday Throwdown - Chipboard
Stampin for the weekend - Autumn inspiration
OCC - Colour combo "Beautiful fall colours"
Cute Card Thursday - Make your own (the leaf)

So on to more technical details, did you see I finally started using a watermark?!  The watermark was purchased from Doodle Pantry, Laurie there makes them so pretty and they are a great price, totally recommend if you want one you go there!  And my Photoshop Elements arrived yesterday, so I started playing with it--this is going to take a lot more learning than I expected!  Any words of wisdom, please share!