Vintage autumn

Shall we start another Scrapping4Fun challenge? Matching the season, we have an "autumn" theme this time, with an additional request of make your creation look vintage. 
For my GD task this time, I decided to create a card or a tag in brown-ish colours. However, the "vintage" thing bothered me a little as I'm usually not working on vintage projects. My confusion was once again saved by the Graphics Fairy, where I found a beautiful image of mushrooms.
Once I settled for an autumn card, I went through my stash to grab the matching papers. 
It took me quite some time to pick the right ones, and even longer to arrange them properly, and just when this ordeal was done, another one began: which embellishments should I pick to keep and/or enhance the vintage look without shifting focus away from those amazing mushrooms?

In the end, I went with a couple of cream/brown paper flowers alongside with some paper foliage from the collection of autumn papers created by Nina Štajner which I've purchased recently. I've cut the branches from the paper for no reason whatsoever, and it came pretty handily as I didn't have to cut them now, meaning I could work towards my final result without rushing. After playing around with the layout a little bit, I decided to place a bigger piece of greenery in the lower corner of the card...

... and a smaller branch in the upper right corner. 

And while the upper decor is rather flat except for the flowers...

... I layered the leaves with the help of 3D pads to create a vivid eye-catcher. 

As I intend to use my creation as a birthday card for a gentleman, I placed a short birthday greeting on the base of the vintage print, which I again decorated with a small floral element. 

For some more vintage touch, I added a rather broad lace that runs through the entire length of the card but is mostly covered by the paper arrangement. Once everything was done, I placed pearls of different colours and sizes all over the card for some extra bling.

To make sure the one leftover corner wouldn't remain all too empty, I remembered a vintage butterfly print I had in my stash from some previous project. 

However, as I printed it at home, it lacked the glossy shine of the leaves that were in the rest of the card. Being the horrible perfectionist that I am, I tried to imitate the shine by adding colourless nail polish. It didn't bring the desired result at first, but after adding a couple more layers  I couldn't tell the difference between home and bought print. 
To be totally honest, the piece carried the distinct smell of nail polish for a while, but it completely cleared within a day or two and I will certainly use this random life craft hack in future! 

Before I sign off for the day, just a quick peek to the inside: with the rich outside, I decided to go for a little decoration inside as well rather than leaving everything empty. In the end, I picked a light brown paper from another set of autumn papers and placed a punched beige strip atop of it to create a pocket for the birthday wishes. 

A little contribution to the September collection of Create in Austria - artwork created by Austrians and/or in Austria.

challenges: 
- 613 avenue create: ATG
- a bit more time to craft: ATG
- a place to start: ATG
- allsorts challengeblog: trees and leaves
- basteltraum: autumn
- brown sugar: ATG
- cardz4guyz: treea/leaves
- crafting with an attitude: ATG
- crafty calendar: lots of layers
- crafty gals corner: fall colours
- crafty sentiments: ATG
- creative inspirations: lace & pearls
- creative moments: ATG with optional twist "masculine"
- cute card thursday: dies/punches
- cutie pie challengeblog: celebrations
- everybody art: dies
- little red wagon: fall
- love to craft: ATG 
- morgans artworld: ATG
- pennys papertake: ATG
- male room: embellishments
- through the craftroom door: ATG
- unicorn challengeblog: autumn
- wortartwednesday: ATG
- pinspirational
- worldwide open design team challenge: ATG