Hi all,

Just thought I would add in my entry to this month’s Inspiration Challenge. Great colors!

I used alcohol inks on holographic paper as a background to the lovely Cosmos Craft-a-Flower.

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If you are interested in the supplies I used on a particular card, please email me. I have used products from Simon Says Stamps, Gina K Designs, My Favorite Things, and Altenew mostly.

Hope you have a great day —

Penny

Wow, this should be my last class before doing a two-hour workshop before becoming a full Altenew Educator.  How exciting!  I hope this makes the grade and I can prepare for a workshop.

In this class Tania Ahmed showed us how to use multiple mediums within one card.  She covered quite a lot of territory and made what could be a mess into some beautiful works of art.  From her class I chose to use the example of watercolor, embossing paste, and embossing powder.  Here is a video of my process using these mediums:

Now to take this background and make it into a card.  I had some tulle that was left from my wedding almost six years ago.  It is purple and I thought that could be used on the card in some way to remember our love and could be part of my husband’s Valentine’s Day card.  I tied some into a bow, and created a ribbon-like edge on the left side.  I glued it down to the cardstock on the back then also glued some fun foam on top of it and mounted it onto a card base.

I cut the word ‘love’ from the Circled Greetings: Love Die three times and glued them together.  I also cut the word out of Tim Holtz metallic lavender paper.  I glued it onto the card front then added some pearls for embellishments and my card was finished.

Check out the shimmery close up view of this card and the bonus card below. I love the sparkle of the Translucent Pearl embossing powder.

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Bonus card:  I also tried to add some tulle to another similar background…made the same way as the video showed.  This time the tulle was too much and I took it off.  Instead, I wove together the Woven Heart Die out of the deep purple paper and added it to the front of the card with a few purple sequins to finish it off. I used the ‘Hugs’ from the Simple Greetings Die Set and cut the shadow in deep purple and the word in white –again stacking three on top.  This time I also pressed the word into embossing ink and then dipped it into the Altenew Translucent Pearl embossing powder and heated it.  Now it matched the diamond snowflakes on the card and sparkled.

This has been a great journey through AECP. I already have ideas for my two hour workshop so I hope this passes and sends me on the way. Thank you all for watching this process. I highly recommend taking all the classes in the Altenew Academy. You will learn sooo much!

Oh, what a lot of fun was this class.  Lots of different information on using stencils in different ways.  I wanted to do more videos but this set of classes packs in sooo much I ‘d have a forever video to capture its essence.  Nicole Watt does an excellent job of teaching 7 different (plus) ways to use your stencils.

• Coloring Stencils
• Graphite shading
• Silhouette
• Layering
• Spotlight/watercoloring
• Alcohol inks
• Using up the scraps

I will show you a few examples of most of these techniques but I will be focusing on the alcohol inks for this post.  Just like Nicole, I LOVE alcohol inks.  The re-inkers from Altenew work really well in any manner you might use alcohol inks.

Working with the stencils can be a bit tricky and very messy.  Messy is part of the fun for me…some like to wear gloves but I have never found the alcohol inks to be that lasting that I felt I needed gloves.  It is always a good idea to work on top of covered surface or in a box, though, to protect your crafting space from getting too messy.  One of the major things of using alcohol inks is that you have very little control over the overall outcome, yet you can also get LOTS of backgrounds made quickly and easily and no two will be alike. Then you can use them either as backgrounds or die cut them for silhouettes or flowers or shapes or sentiments.

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In Nicole’s class she uses photo paper rather than Yupo paper.  She emphasizes that it should be a good quality photo paper – one where you touch the corner with your finger and it sticks a bit.  I, too, have a lot of photo paper and rarely print my own pictures anymore so this is an excellent way to use something you might already have on hand.

The process is this:

1.  Have all your supplies ready ahead of time and open next to your workspace –inks and a spray bottle of alcohol  (Nicole used 70% alcohol but I used 91%).
2. Inside a box lay your photo paper shiny side up.
3. Choose the stencil you would like to use and pit it on top of the photo paper
4. Add a few drops of ink – whatever color or colors you like
5. Spray with alcohol, if desired, to help move the inks around
6. Lift the stencil up and move your paper to an area to dry
7. There will still be a lot of ink on your stencil so put down another sheet of photo paper
8. Spray the stencil with alcohol and lay the stencil down on top of the paper, let it sit a minute then lift up and put aside the paper to dry
9. Chances are you can still repeat steps 7 and 8 multiple times, with the result of each getting lighter and sometimes giving a nice watercolor look.  This can create some very lovely tidbits which will give you many background options.

In my examples below I used Altenew Deep Iris, Sea Glass, Ocean Waves, and Dessert Night.

Here are two of the cards I made with these backgrounds:

Also, here are other examples of cards from a few of the other lessons in this set:

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