Exchange cards with embossed backgrounds, die cut leaves and laser printed digital greetings

I have made up these two cards for my partners in this month's Card Exchange.  I started with larger envelopes and made ivory cards to fit inside.  I cut two quarter sheets of brown cardstock and embossed them using two different embossing folders - TH swirls, SU wood grain.  I had to trimmed each of them into two pieces to make them long enough for my cards so I chose long greetings from my stash that would bridge the gap.  

For the first card, the greeting is from Beccy's Place.  It is a free digital which I sized and laser printed.  To coordinate with my card elements I colourwashed it a bit with watercolour in green and brown and then watercoloured the flower in a warm yellow.  I adhered my two pieces of brown background to my card leaving the gap in the top section and mounted my greeting over it using double sided tape on each end.  I dug through my little stash of leaf die cuts (TH) and found these that worked with my greeting.  I applied glue on the back and tucked them behind before pressing them down.
For the second card, I used a laser printed font thank you greeting from my stash.  I trimmed both long edges with deckle decorative scissors and then ran my pattern tracing wheel on each edge.  I applied double sided tape on the ends and the middle and adhered it over the gap that was created when I adhered the trimmed background to my large ivory card.  I embossed two of the same leaf die cuts (TH) one in green and one in muted tones (Hammered Botanicals background) with the Swiss Dots embossing folder.  I applied glue to the back of the fronds before applying them to the card front.  I tucked the green one behind the greeting and overlapped the muted one over it.  These sketches are a little CAS for me but I like them.               Therese