Burned wood for my birthday card

My Dad is a retired carpenter and I like to add wood to his birthday cards.  I am fortunate that my DH also does some wood working so little pieces of wood show up from his shop regularly.
I retrieved this one from my little stash of wood pieces and decided to do some wood burning on it because I have been wanting to try that for quite a while.  Never having done it before and very little time I decided having a image to trace would be best so I dug through my stamps looking for something appropriate as well as simple in design.  This little maple leaf was just what I needed.  I stamped on my thin piece of wood with my greeting, then in an all over design with the leaf and then plugged in my wood burning iron. Once it was hot, I started going over the leaves one at a time tracing all the stamped lines.  The grain of the wood affects how dark the burn is and how deep the tip goes so it was a bit of a learning process.  After doing all the leaves and greeting it still needed a bit of something so I added stippling with the iron.  Just what it needed!  I reinforced several areas of my wood with tape before I glued it to a brown layer and cut the edges of the cardstock with decorative scissors.  I added strips of gold cardstock on both side of my element and glued it to a dark maroon card which I had border punched on the front edge.  I added dots in the scallops and lines on either side of my focal element with a gold gel pen.  That was looking pretty good but it still needed a bit of something so I decided to add water colour.  I started with one leaf thinking I was going to do them all and decided that one would be best.
Loving my first wood burning project!!  I have a few other ideas so maybe that will show up here in the future some time!

Therese