Fall birthday cards featuring bare trees, sponging, plaid ribbon and stamped collage backgrounds

I am working on my family cards for November.  We are having such beautiful fall weather I am still in fall mode.  I started with two large orange cards which fit in large envelopes from my stash.  I created two collage/serendipity backgrounds for them and embossed them with copper leaves after they were dry.  I have finally been able to create a sponged focal element I am happy with.  I copper embossed the "Lovely as a Tree" (SU) onto ivory cardstock and then used some of my torn paper masks to create a sponged area over them with Ochre permanent ink.  I have seen some much brighter ones but this will do for my first good result.  I added the little birthday greeting (SU) in brown, punched slots in each end and added a piece of orange plaid ribbon which I embellished with yellow ink to help it coordinate better with my elements.  I added four rows of paper piercing to each edge using my pattern tracing wheel.  I used double sided tape to secure my ends to the back of my backgrond and 3D foam tape to secure my focal element in place.  I added punched leaf borders to the bottom. The dark brown offsets the background quite nicely.  I adhered my large backgrounds to my orange cards to finish off my cards.    Therese