Beautiful Details with Altenew

Welcome friends to my continuing journey with Altenew Certification. I have taken a couple of months off with working on holiday creations, but have been watching this class called Beautiful Details and wanted to create a card, but not a floral card.

Marika Rahtu, the instructor, has very unique techniques for her designs. There are 6 classes and my card was inspired by the last class. She uses an alcohol marker base as an underlying layer with colored pencils on top. She felt it was faster and more effective than all colored pencils. If you have ever colored with just colored pencils you know that you use a very light hand and multiple layers. It can take a while.

I've done quite a few florals with Altenew and have Altenew's Hug Me Stamp and thought the (alcohol marker base coloring with colored pencils over top) technique would work well with the fox and balloons. Time for a change from Christmas cards!

I stamped 2 of the fox with balloons images with Altenew's Gray Denim Crisp Dye Ink and partially colored them with Altenew's Alcohol Markers as Marika demonstrated in her class. I have all of Altenew's Alcohol Markers and wanted a rainbow of colors for the balloons. I used colored pencils from my stash in coordinating colors in a gentle stroking motion on top of the Alcohol Marker base.  Finally, I used the coordinating die to cut them out. You can see that the die also cuts between the strings in the balloon, which is always a great feature. I did layer them with a slight offset.

I did want some interest in the background and used a favorite technique using a cover die  making my own stencil. I cover a piece of cardstock with Altenew's Peach Gold Washi Tape. It's wide enough to cover in one piece. I also like that it is somewhat neutral in color and doesn't distract from the ink blending.

Then I place a cover die over it and ran it through my Big Shot. In this case, I used Altenew's Garden Trellis Cover Die.  I then have my own homemade stencil which works like a charm for a subtle ink-blended background. Plus, it can be saved for many many uses.

I used Altenew's Sea Glass Crisp Dye Ink with Scrapbook.com's Foam Blending Tool to create the background onto Blick Studio's Bristol Smooth Paper. I buy the 11" X 14" pad and cut it down to card size. It blends perfectly and I not only use it for ink blending, but also with water color markers, such as Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush Markers.

The Sea Glass Crisp Dye Ink is such a nice subtle color which doesn't distract from the focal image. You can see the pencil lines better in this close up:

I added a few gold stars and a "Happy Birthday, Sending the Biggest Hug Your Way" sentiment from the Hug Me set inside. Lastly, over the balloons I added some sparkle with Spectrum Noir Sparkle Pen. 

Thank you for joining me today on my Altenew journey and check out Marika's Class if you want to see some amazing "Beautiful Details"!

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