Good morning! Emily Midgett here with several projects featuring some fabulous goodies from Altenew and showing you a sneak of the new Essentials by Ellen Leading Lady release, coming your way this Sunday, April 8! We are hopping along to help Altenew celebrate their 4th birthday, and I couldn’t be more excited to help them celebrate. You should be arriving here from Jennifer McGuire's blog and you can pop over to Altenew's blog if you want to start from the beginning ;)
Flowers are my jam. Like, I want to put a flower on every.single.project. Plus, Altenew’s flowers are utterly amazing, almost unmatched within the industry in my opinion, so it made me extra excited to be able to flower my cards allll up today! I have a variety of projects for you, using several techniques, so let’s get started with the details!
For my first project today, I went with some simple stamping and die cutting. No fancy techniques on this one, just some good, old fashioned stamping. Altenew’s ink sets are just perfect for use with their layered stamps, and while coloring Altenew stamps is my first love, their layered floral stamps are simply divine. I stamped the gorgeous Flower Arrangement stamp from Altenew using the Red Sunset and Rock Collection inks, then die cut them with their coordinating dies.
For the card base, I die cut the Dodec Cover Plate from some rose gold washi tape paper from my stash, similar to the DCWV Washi Metals Stack in the Ellen Hutson store. I adhered it to a Bazzill Gummy Worms card stock base, then arranged my stamped florals in a cluster on the front, adhering them with dimensional foam adhesive. The greeting is a simple dimensional die cut from the Flower Arrangement die collection; I die cut it three times from the same Gummy Worms card stock, then adhered them all together and placed them over the top of my floral spray. The final touch was to add some Hero Arts Crystal Lacquer to add a bit of texture to the greeting so that it stood out more.
For my next project, I combined some pretty Altenew products with one of our fabulous new Leading Ladies: Hot Mess. (Isn’t that just so perfect??) I’m a stay-at-home-mom/blogger, which means that I am frequently a hot mess, myself… and this chica’s top knot is a fairly accurate representation of what my hair looks like at the end of the day haha!! I wanted to show that Altenew’s floral outline stamps work beautifully when stamped in a pretty color, in addition to being stunning when colored. I started by stamping the new Hot Mess Leading Lady in some Copic-friendly black ink on white card stock, then colored her with my Copic markers, which will be listed individually below. I die cut her out with the coordinating die.
For the card base, I stamped one of the floral sprays from Altenew’s Forever and Always stamp set using Crimson ink in the top corner of my card front, then using my blending tool, added some subtle Rouge ink to soften the bold lines of the floral stamping. I also die cut the Creative Edges: Lace from some pretty pinky coral card stock, then added a strip of the Gummy Worms card stock to the top of the pretty lacy die cut. I arranged the Leading Lady and lacy die cuts on my card front to determine my sentiment placement (sentiment is from the Hot Mess stamp set and I absolutely love it) which I stamped in Versafine and heat embossed to really make that black sentiment pop from the ink blending in the corner. I popped the die cuts up with dimensional adhesive, then added a smattering of Pretty Pink Posh jewels.
For my final project, I couldn’t resist doing some no-line coloring using an oldie-but-goodie from Altenew: Peony Bouquet. I started by doing a little simple masking to create a peony bouquet on some Gummy Worms card stock using Unicorn White pigment ink. I like using the white ink on this dark card stock because it’s easily covered up with the Prismacolor pencils and it’s super easy to see on that dark background. No-line coloring can be challenging at the best of times, especially if you can’t see your stamped image because it’s practically the same color as the paper! I’ve done my own version of “black magic” stamping on this card, but with colored pencils. My secret for vibrant coloring on dark cardstock: I lay down a layer of the white Prismacolor pencil first to create a barrier between the colored pencil and the dark cardstock. This extra step helps to keep the colors vibrant and make them pop off the page. Here’s my process: lay down the white pencil, then add the colored pencil on top, finally blending everything with the Prismacolor colored pencil. I wanted to keep my gray and coral color scheme going, though my final product came out a bit more pink than I had intended. C’est la vie.
After my coloring was completed, I used Altenew’s Everything About You stamp set to white heat emboss my greeting. That bright white embossing really pops off of the dark card base, and the font is simple enough to not distract from the intricate floral swag. The final touch was to add a few dots here and there with my white gel pen to help even out any gaps in my floral spray. While the first two projects had lots of dimension from lots of foam adhesive, this project is nice and flat, perfect for easy mailing.
Well, that’s all for me today! Wishing you a wonderfully happy 4th birthday, Altenew!
Your next hop stop is Sandra Dietrich!
Make sure you head over the the Altenew blog to see the full hop list and there are PRIZES! Be sure to leave comments by April 15th, 2018 at 11:59 PM EDT for a chance to win! 30 WINNERS will be chosen at random from the comments left on any of the blogs listed below and will be announced on the Altenew blog on April 17th, 2018.
Supplies: