Folded with Care

I’ve used the Altenew Artist Markers (alcohol markers) with great joy and have been pleased with how they work but I learned a lot about them in this Level 2 AECP class by Sara Naumann.  She is great to listen to and has lots of good FAQs to share and tips (pun intended) to using these markers.  I had so much fun with this I did two cards, two different techniques.

The first card I want to share is the second one I made but was quick and easy to do in one evening.  The hardest part was cutting the papers to the right sizes so they could be laid out appropriately.  The center horizontal white cardstock is 1” wide by 5.5” long…the length of an A2 card.  The wider strip of white cardstock is 3” x 5.5”.  The square in the center is 2.25”.  The square and the 1” band each have black cardstock behind them that gives a 1/16” boarder…just enough to make the white stand out.  For the large 3” wide white cardstock I simply put thin strips of black paper along each edge.  I also cut a 2 1/8” square of vellum.  So, having all my pieces already cut but not glued made the rest go fast.

There are three key parts of this lesson: One to use a brayer and another to use alcohol markers on vellum as well as embellishments.  To use the brayer, simply scribble marker onto your craft mat then spritz with alcohol and rub the brayer over the ink.  Then rub the ink on the brayer over the white cardstock…purposely leaving some white spots.  I used two marker colors on this:  B714 Volcano Lake and R926 Sapphire.  In combining them there were only hints of the Volcano Lake.  The outcome made me think sky.

My next item was to pick out a stamp to stamp on the vellum.  Following along the sky theme I chose a nice dragonfly from the Altenew Wild and Free stamp set to stamp with the Altenew crisp Jet-Black ink.  It was a new stamp so I rubbed my fingers across it several times to be sure I would get the manufacturing finish off, thus giving a cleaner, crisper, stamp.  Since vellum does not absorb ink like cardstock, I had to be sure the stamped image was completely dry before applying any of the colored ink.  I used my Wagner heat tool to dry it plus gave it a little extra time to be sure it was totally dry.  While waiting I put the card layout in my Misti stamping tool and stamped the sentiment from the Altenew Blooming Mandalas set.

Going back to the dragonfly I used the same two colors from braying and ‘pounced’ color into the wings by just making small dots with the markers inside the outlines.  The pouncing gives a different effect than just brushing and filling in color.  I also colored in the body with the black Artist Marker.   I set that aside to dry and began gluing my card together.  I adhered the black strips on the 3” wide cardstock (it was a little to wide to just glue next to so I glued it under the white to give a smaller black line).  Then glued that piece directly to the card front.  Then I carefully glued the 1” strip of white with my sentiment onto the black background and then onto the center of the card base.  I glued the white square on top of the black square and then to the card base.  Now it was time for the vellum.  I didn’t want the glue to show so I carefully put it behind the body only of the dragonfly and adhered it to the top of the square.  The vellum curled up a bit so I added just a tiny drop of liquid glue on the white cardstock…left it to dry about a minute before pushing the vellum onto it.  It was still tacky but did not make an obvious mark of glue on the vellum. The corner was no longer curling up.

To brighten the card a bit and to embellish it I took some chunky glitter crystals I had and spread them out across the card.  Their blue sapphire coloring matched the blue in the wings of the dragonfly.  Another tip from Sara is to use the markers to color embellishments to match when you don’t have them.  I took a creamy pearl and colored it black with the Artist marker as I didn’t have a black one.  This became the head of the dragonfly. And, thus, this was finished!  I loved the way the dragonfly looked as if it was flying across the sky.  And just as its wings sometimes sparkle, so did the finished card.

The second card was even simpler.  Again, scribbling some color onto a craft mat and spritzing it with alcohol, I was able to pick up ink with my Tim Holtz splatter brush and put down some fine splatters in blues (B204 Ocean Waves and B227 Desert night) and orange (Y817 Firebrick).  These were close to the colors of my high school colors so it was a fun remembrance.  My husband had some orange twine or kite string which worked perfectly to wrap around the popped-up center cardstock.  I striped the sides of the card base first before attaching the center piece with foam tape.  I cut the sentiment out of corresponding blue paper using the Bold Thanks Dies set after stamping ‘ever so much’ from the Apothocary Labels stamp set. Then embellished it with some colored gems by Honeybee and adding an orange plaid bow.  Simple but attractive.

I can see using these techniques over and over again with lots of fun variations.

Thanks for visiting today.  Please go to the right and click FOLLOW to continue with me on my journey in the Altenew Educators Certification Program.