March 3, 2021

Hello Crafty Friends! Welcome to my blog. I always love to learn new ways to use my products and create backgrounds. It is great to be able to stretch products that we have. The Beyond Basic Backgrounds class by Lydia Evans on the Altenew Academy gave so many ideas to create awesome backgrounds. I loved all the ideas I got from this class.

For this card I used the following:

• Altenew Primrose Layering Stamp & Die Set
• Altenew Peony Layering Stamp & Die Set
• Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cubes: Soft Lilac, Lavender Fields, Deep Iris, and Midnight Violet, plus Parrot and Olive
• Altenew Pure White Crisp Embossing Powder
• Altenew 36 Pan Watercolor Set: Lavender Fields
• Gemini Junior
• Tim Holtz Distress Heavystock cardstock
• Simon Says Stamp Slate cardstock

Who doesn’t enjoy a good ombre effect? So I jumped at Lydia’s idea for making our own stencil and blending a beautiful ombre background. I reached for purples for this card which I absolutely love but do not grab often enough.

• I first made a stencil using the dies for all 3 flowers in the Primrose Layering Stamp & Die Set.
• I grabbed my Best Ever Craft Tape from Spellbinders to secure this to a panel of Distress Heavystock cardstock. I recently discovered this cardstock when I took a class from Jenn Shurkus at the Creative Chick. It is a dream to blend on.

• I used a variety of blending brushes as I don’t have a complete set from Altenew yet. Although I highly recommend Altenew’s Ink Blending Tools. I started with Soft Lilac, then Lavender Fields, Deep Iris and finally Midnight Violet Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cubes.
• When I finished I removed my stencil and set the panel aside to dry as I would be heat embossing on it. I wanted the ink to be really dry so I didn’t end up with specks of embossing powder all over my panel.
• While the panel dried, I stamped a couple layers of flowers from the Primrose Layering Stamp & Die Set using all the purple mini inks that I ink blended with. These weren’t at saturated as my ink blended panel so didn’t need much time to dry completely. I also stamped some leaves using Parrot and Olive Crisp Dye Ink Mini Cubes
• I grabbed that ink blended panel that I set aside to dry and used an anti static powder bag over the entire panel. I then stamped the outline image of the flowers over all the ink blended flowers. I stamped using an acrylic block so all images weren’t perfect but that was fine with me. After I was done stamping all the images with VersaMark ink, I used Pure White Crisp Embossing Powder from Altenew over it then embossed with a heat tool. My heat tool, that is 18 years old, is started to give out on me, please share with me in the comments which embossing heat tool you use.

• I did the same thing with my flowers and leaves. I did emboss the flower centers for these individual flower images as well.
• I then used the coordinating dies to cut out my flowers and leaves.
• Using Lavender Fields from my 36 pan Watercolor set from Altenew, I created splatter on my background panel and flowers.
• I cut my background panel down and layered it on a cut down panel of Simon Says Stamp Slate cardstock.
• Using a sentiment from the Peony Layering Stamp & Die Set, I created a sentiment strip. The stamped sentiment was mounted on Slate cardstock. I then mounted that on my background with foam squares.

• I tucked my flower images around the sentiment strip using more foam squares. The leaves were then nestled around the flowers and mounted directly on the background panel.
• The entire background was mounted on a top folding heavy weight card base. I then sprinkled some Arctic Breeze Pearls from Studio Katio around my card for some sparkle.

I had a ton of fun making this card and loved the end result. I chose not to trim the images that were hanging over my card base and will put this card in a larger envelope if needed. Honestly, that small decision took me thinking about it overnight. I hope you got some inspiration from this card and go out and create something beautiful.