Altenew - AECP - Level 2 - Creative, Watercolour Media

Oh my...where do I start, this has to be one of my favourite classes so far!...
It was taught by the lovely, Jennifer Rzasa, Debby Hughes and Laura Bassen.

Now you all know that I love to water colour with paints, but you don't need watercolour paints to achieve the watercolour look!

I would really recommend anyone to take this class, it has lots of inspiration and tricks... so much so that I couldn't just do one card for this class...I had to do four, and they are all different, and made using different techniques, from what I learnt in class!

 I'll start off with my favourite card out of the four...

Firstly, I stamped the images using a water resistant ink, I wanted to be able to see the black lines for this card. I masked off my images (I have gone over this in a previous post) until I had a cluster of flowers that I was happy with.

I've smooshed the ink pad on to my glass surface, added a drop of water and mixed it with my paint brush, and I've started with the lightest brown ink Sand Dune, to create my background shadows, I like to start with the lightest and build up the colour, just as you would doing any normal colouring. 

After all my ink smooshing and painting, I've ended up with this... just a few ink splatters needed!

And this card has been created using these ink pads, which is fabulous when you don't have some of these colours in the watercolour pan set, it gives you so many options!

Ok on too my next card...a close second ....

This one was fairly easy, I started by stamping my three flowers with Tattered Rose distress ink, as I wanted a no line look for this one.  Distress ink, reacts with water and it helps to actually colour the image too!

I fussy cut the flowers as I didn't want a border round them and I arranged them on my background so I knew where I needed to stamp the leaves..

No I'm not drawing smiley faces, but a line so I know where my leaves have to go LOL

I've also stamped the leaves in distress ink too, so I can blend it out with water... The background is a mix of distress ink and white gouache, it gives it chalky/faded look. All that was left was to paint a grey shadow border and foam mount the flowers and add sequins!

My third card is a water coloured panel on which I have heat embossed a background and then reactivated the paint by adding a darker colour on top.

And for my last card, I've water coloured through a stencil, and then smooshed some ink on to acetate with some gold shimmer for the gardenia flower.

And here's all of the cards I created with the inspiration from today's class!

Hope you liked the cards and I hope that I've encouraged you to either take the class or have a go at one of these techniques!

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs

Alli

XoX

Altenew - AECP - Level 2 - Colour Your Day

Hi guys I'm back today with another card that I've made for my AECP.

Todays class was called Colour Your Day, with the lovely Therese Calvird, I really enjoyed this class and some of the info in the class I remembered vaguely from art class at school...way, way back...(too far back if I'm honest LOL)

So lets look at the colour wheel.. (this one is a free one I've downloaded)

Can you see from the wheel that if you say go with Red, that the complementary colour is Green, and that the Triad colours would be Blue-Green and Yellow Green... (Triad means it forms a triangle).
And if you look at the wheel it shows what other colours work well together too..like Orange and Red Violet or even Blue, colour combo's that you often wouldn't use together...

This really helps when your stuck, and not sure what colours go well with each other.

Also, photos can be a great colour inspiration too, or colour swatches, I have a lot of those saved on my Pinterest.., the other day I actually did a colour challenge that was from one of those swatches!

So I've based my card on the formula that Therese taught us the 70:20:10 Which is 70% of the card will be one colour, 20% is the next colour and 10% the last colour.. The colours used can be within the family of that colour. (like the colour wheel above)

Any way my card as I said is on the 70:20:10 rule,  I'm going to show you the card and then the process used..

I've used 70% as the neutral kraft colour, 20% the pink colours and 10% green colours.

So the process involved in this card... firstly, I stamped the image on to some kraft card stock with Sand Dune ink.

I've then go in with my light colours to add highlights, I like adding the white first on kraft card stock, this just ensures that I do in-fact get highlights where I want them.  And you need to work fast when using a light ink on kraft card stock as the ink seems to vanish..

Here I've started to add the darker greens to the image for shadows.. and then I'll move on to my Pink colours.

And once the image is complete, I can go back and re-stamp if need be. (I am using a stamping positioner)

I decided that I wanted to stamp the rest of the card with the images from the set, but my only colouring would be this one image, creating a spotlight effect.

Don't forget, that it won't be as detailed as this as the ink will nearly vanish.

I've framed the card and heat embossed a sentiment in Pink and used Pink sequins to tie in with my 20% colour.

 This formula can also be used in many ways... here's a few examples I've made..

On this card, I've used similar colours but the background is my 70% the cream leaves my 20% and the gold sentiment my 10%.

On this one, my background is splattered with my 20% and my 10% colours. (Pink/Reds and Green)

This whole card is just three colours too, White, Gray and Pink.

Hope this has helped you with you're colour combo struggle!

Thanks for stopping by

Hugs

Alli

XoX

Altenew - Irresistible Inking Techniques

My last lesson for level one of my AECP class, was inking techniques...

Let me just say that this isn't the perfect card, but I've learned a few things in this class, Ink doesn't have to be just one colour or solid images of colour... and a card can incorporate a few different techniques, which is what I've done with mine.

This is just a fun card with blasts of colour and bursts of gold shimmer...

The background is alcohol inks with gold mixed in.

The clustered leaves have been stamped in various shades with some ombre stamping this was achieved by first stamping out the outline image, and then stamping the whole image in my first lightest colour.

I've stamped the remainder of the image in two goes, sectioning off the the leaves I wanted in the middle colour. (please see above).

And finally stamping the deepest colour (above) gives you the result of an ombre image.

The flower  (from the Wallpaper Art set) was ink smooshed with gold metallic spray and ink on water colour paper.. there are about five different colours on the flower which was dried using a heat tool in between each application of smoosh LOL.  If you have never tried this and please do, every result is so different.

To ink smoosh you will need a piece of acetate, or even the plastic off the back of the stamp will work.  Tap the ink pad on to the acetate, add some metallic spray if you want a shimmer to it, spritz with some water and lets get inky!

 Turn the acetate over and smoosh it on to you're image. Use a heat gun to dry each application this will avoid an inky muddy coloured mess!

The circle of gold was the left over circle from my Scene card, I'm trying to use up those scraps LOL.

All that was left was to fussy cut and die cut the images and assemble, yes you guessed it with foam tape and add some sequins!  The sentiment ( from the Clustered Leaves set ) was stamped in Jet black ink on some of the left over water coloured card stock that had been ink smooshed.

I've really enjoyed these video lessons, and my advice is jump in and take a lesson or three, you'll have so much fun and learn new techniques and re-visit old ones you had forgot all about! most of all is have fun!

Some close ups of all that gold shimmer!

Thanks for being here with me through my level 1 journey!

Hugs

Alli

XoX

Altenew - Easy Die Cutting Techniques

I've carried on with my AECP today as its raining here in Melbourne and what better way to spend the day but by learning new techniques and crafting!

My lesson today was die cutting not your normal run of the mill die cutting but how to incorporate different techniques on your cards, this was not something I have ever really done so this was a great lesson for me and made me think out of the box.

I started by stamping the clustered leaves on to a piece of white card stock and gold card stock, exactly in the same position that I wanted to inlay them in.

The white card stock looked a little too white, so I ink blended around where the gold leaves where to be inlaid, I liked the look of this so I continued ink blending the rest of the paper, I grabbed a darker colour and ink blended where the leaves were to make them stand out more.

Securing the inlaid leaves was easier than I thought I left the piece of ink blended card stock in my stamping tool held down by the magnets, I inlaid the clustered leaves and grabbed a piece of Press and seal to hold it all together while I turned it over and secured it all with foam tape.

I stamped the sentiment also from the clustered leaves in Dark Chocolate ink on to some vellum and wrapped this around the panel of the card, along with a thin strip of Golden washi at the top and bottom of the vellum, and I secured the panel on to the card front, all that was left to was to add sequins and my flowers...

Ok so I could have gone with just stamping some flowers, from the Build a Flower - Peony Blossom set, but I wanted this card to stand out. If you've never worked with Foamiran before its similar to fun foam but a lot thinner... The Foam on the left is fun foam and on the right is Foamiran, can you see how much thinner it is.

 I grabbed some Foamiran in cream and die cut 3 medium flowers and 3 small flowers. It die cuts really well and you don't need any additional plates or shims to cut it.

 I inked up the medium flower with Mocha ink and stamped on to the Foamiran, now the small flower doesn't have a corresponding detail stamp so I just used the same one for all the flowers.

You can use your heat tool to mould the flowers but a really hot dry iron works much better and Foamiran does shrink when heated, don't forget about this fact, if you need too fill a large space with flowers.

After the flowers were all moulded I used a glue dot to stick the smaller one on too the larger one, I've also moulded one of the larger flowers with the petals facing down and the other two facing up, just for something different.

I've added some gems in the middle and popped them on my card, a few sequins later and I was done!

I really like how this card turned out using the inlaid die technique!

Maybe you'll try this or better still take the class over on the Altenew site see what you can learn!

Thanks for popping in to see me.
Hugs
Alli
XoX

Altenew - Celebration Stencil Techniques

I'm on a roll today, I've taken another class for my AECP, this one was all about Stencil Techniques.

I must admit, I am quite new to stencilling, I've always used a patterned paper behind my images... but now I've started to use them, I'm always looking for different ways to use them.

This class was fabulous for those of us who don't use them very often.. I learnt that sometimes placing a stencil in a different way or just using part of the stencil makes a very big impact on the card, or by using different products you can get a whole new look to the card like embossing paste and coloured embossing paste.

I'd received some new inks and stencils in the mail the other day along with the new water colour pan set and I wanted to play, this class was the ideal opportunity for me to do just this!

I started by Using the Watercolour stripes stencil,  and not sure if you remember that tip I gave in a previous post? well secure the stencil on the back of the paper with painters tape, that way it won't ruin the front of  the card when you remove it!

I created an Ombre look by starting with my lightest colour in the Coffee Break inks and ending at the bottom of the stencil with the darkest colour.

I made a frame by using 2 rectangle dies placed together, the cardstock wasn't quite dark enough, so I used my blending brush to darken it with the Dark Chocolate ink.

I used the Weekend Doodles stamp set and stamped out the largest flower image on to water colour paper, and water coloured it with Paper Bag and Lagoon.

I stamped out the wreath image on normal 80lb paper in rocky shore, it needed some colour so I put some of the ink from Rocky Shore onto a stamp block and used my water brush to add a little of the colour to the leaves, I didn't want the wreath image whole so I chopped it into 3 and arranged it on the card with some sisal and sequins.

The sentiment was from the same stamp set but stamped in a darker ink - Dark Chocolate, from the Four Scoops collection of inks.

Here's my finished project, I just love the colour combo of browns and teals together!

Thanks for popping in to see me!

Hugs

Alli

XoX

Altenew - All About Layering 2: Altenew AECP

So I'm back again today, sharing my completed card for the second lesson on level one, All about layering 2, this is also a freebie lesson that anyone can do, and I would really encourage you to try the free lessons first and especially if you haven't played with the layered stamp sets,  there are quite a few videos to watch and homework to practice on how to align these type of stamp sets.  I learnt that sometimes aligning a bigger stamp it not easy as you think..but even if you are slightly out they are forgiving.

For my card I chose a stamp set that was featured in one of the videos, It's a gorgeous stamp set and it layers beautifully! My whole card including the sentiment was from this set it's called Beautiful day.

I decided that I wanted this card to be just two colour family's, Warm Gray and Red Sunset.

I started by stamping the solid image of the flower in the middle of the paper, this gave me a starting point to work my other stamps around it, and I knew that I was going to re stamp the flower image and fussy cut it out so it wouldn't matter that I overlapped the images too much.

I started with the lightest Gray Morning Frost, and stamped one of the images at opposite corners to the other, I then moved on to the next image and stamped this in the next colour Evening Gray, and then the final image and the next colour Moon Rock.

I decided that I wanted these images to be nearly solid, so I matched them to the French Grey Prismacolor pencils and shaded them ever so lightly.

I re stamped the layering flower in the Red Sunset inks, and stamped the leaves in the Warm Gray inks and fussy cut them out and arranged them on the card with some foam tape.  The sentiment was stamped in Lava Rock ink and added with foam tape and a few sequins later, my card was completed.

Here's my card

What I've learnt from taking this class is that sometimes, you don't have to use all the colours that are in the colour families, that you can mix and match and get really different results!

Thanks for popping in to see me, and I hope you give this card a try yourself!
Hugs
Alli
XoX

Altenew - All About Layering 1: Altenew AECP

I'm so excited I just had to share.....

I have received an email this morning from Altenew that

I've been accepted  on to the Altenew Educator Certification Program - Group 11 (AECP)

I've just started the academy and the very first lesson is all about layering.  I've been using Altenew stamps for a while now, and layering is something I don't do very often, as I love to colour and watercolour as you know, but I needed to create a layered image for a card for lesson 1, here's what I created.

I decided  to use the new stamp set, A study in watercolor and Vintage Roses for my card.

I started by stamping one of the smaller stamps from the watercolor set in a wreath shape using Sand Dunes ink, once this was complete I sprayed this with antique gold ink spray.

The roses are from the Vintage Roses set, and oh boy there are a lot of stamps in that layering set, but the stamps are clustered together so you know which ones to use.

I decided that I wanted my roses to be in Autumn colours, so I went with the set called Pocket full of sunshine for the larger rose and the smaller ones I used Mango smoothie and the Warm and cozy set.  Once you know how to layer these they look amazing when complete, and the set is quite forgiving if you are slightly out with lining them up.

The sentiment was stamped in dark chocolate ink and it's from the A study in watercolor, I popped up the sentiment and the larger rose with foam tape and added a few sequins, because you know I love my sequins!!!

Hope you liked the card and look out for more cards made with fabulous Altenew products!

Hugs
Alli
XoX