February 28, 2021

Hello Crafty Friends! At the beginning of February I received the awesome news that I had passed my Level 1 challenge for the Altenew Educator Certification Program (AECP). I am so excited to be continuing on to my Level 2 classes. I took a little time to focus on my picture quality and some slight changes to my blog. I am happy with the progress I made but still have lots of learning to do. However I needed to take some time to focus back on my classes and creating, so here I am with my first post of my level 2 classes.

In the Mood for Color by Stephanie Klauck was very interesting and made me stop and think about how we react to colors. For this card I used:

• Altenew’s Snowdrops Layering Die set
• Altenew’s Playful Plumeria Set
• Altenew’s Watercolor brush
• Altenew’s Spring Garden Watercolor Brush Set (Evening Grey, Sea Breeze, and Limeade)
• Altenew’s Tropical Feista Watercolor Brush Set (Lime)
• Canson Cold Press Watercolor Paper
• Versafine Onyx Black Ink
• Slate Cardsotck
• Tonic Aqua Shimmer Pen
• Nuvo Drops in Morning Dew and Simply White

I choose blues and greens for my card to invoke calm, tranquility as well as soothing aspects. I love that this card is simple and peaceful. Using the watercolor brush markers is still a learning process for me so I grabbed them to get myself more comfortable using them.

• For the background I used my watercolor brush to put down lots of water all over my background, then applied Sea Breeze Watercolor Brush Marker to it. I let gravity pull it down as well as added more color in a few areas. When I was happy with the results I set this aside to dry.
• Next I applied a generous amount of water to a couple pieces of watercolor paper ( I have all my papers cut down to A2 size and in a drawer ready to go when needed). I used Limeade Watercolor Brush Marker and Lime Watercolor Brush Marker on these panels to get a nice variety of color and dimension on my final product.
• I once again applied a lot of water to another panel and very lightly applied some Evening Gray Watercolor Brush Marker to add just a hint of dimension to the flower petals when die cut. You can barely see it in the end results but it does make a slight difference.
• After all panels were dry, I used my stems, leaves and flower petal die cuts from the Snowdrops Layering Die set to cut lots of all of them. I cut way more than I needed and just put the leftovers in my sleeve with my set for future projects.

• After assembling my flowers I arranged them plus the stems and leaves on my cut down background panel. When I was happy with the arrangement I glued them all to the background panel. The new Altenew 2 in 1 Precision Glue Pen would be perfect for this. This glue pen is going in my next order.
• Altenew has great sentiments in all their stamp sets to choose from. I had a had time chosing one. I stamped my chosen sentiment from Playful Plumeria on some white cardstock with black ink. Then mounted that on some slate grey card stock.
• I mounted this sentiment over the bottom of my leaf and stem cluster with some foam tape. The bottom was a bit unsightly so this was a perfect way to hide that.
• The Aqua Shimmer Pen added just a hint of shine to all the flower petals. The two different Nuvo drops in Morning Dew and Simply White were the perfect finishing touches.
• This panel was mounted directly on a heavy weight top folding card base and set aside to dry.

I really enjoyed making this card and loved the feel of it once it was completed. I hope you found a little inspiration from today’s post and go out and create something wonderful. Make sure to check out all of the Altenew Academy Classes on their website. They have a ton of great ones to take. Thanks for joining me.