AECP Certification Color Your Day

Hi friends - today I am posting for my Altenew Educator Certification Program. I am on Level 2 #7 and the class I took was called Color Your Day taught by Therese Calvird. She is one of my favorites and I watch her on You Tube, as well. Her style is fun, quirky and yet informative.

The Altenew Academy Classes for the most part have 6 different classes. Therese discussed color inspiration in her first class and one of her recommendations was to join a color challenge. So when I saw the Color Throwdown for this week, I was inspired to used these pastel colors. I normally work in bright bold colors, so this was a challenge for me to do a pastel card with yellow, lilac, green and pink.

Although I love Altenew's florals, I wanted to use some of my non-florals stamps from Altenew. One stamp and die set from Altenew in my stash called Celebrations hasn't been used yet and I wanted to challenge myself with that set and these colors.

I thought the macaron images in the upper right hand corner would be fun in these colors and I stamped that image onto Ranger Watercolor Paper (I have lots of scrap paper to use up!) on the smooth side with Altenew Hazelnut Crisp Dye Ink. It stays wet for a few seconds, so I immediately sprinkled clear embossing powder over it and heat set. This gives a nice border to corral the watercolor!

I used Altenew's 36 Half Pan Watercolor Set: Frayed Leaf, Pink Diamond, Citrus Burst, Midnight Violet and Puffy Heart. Here is a swatch chart from the Altenew site showing all the beautiful colors in this set:

I let the macarons dry and then die cut with the coordinating die from the set. For the bows I used Scrapbook.com's Glitter Brush Marker for a little bling.

The background was made with Altenew's A2 size single sheets of Watercolor Paper. This is a really nice soft cottony paper.

I taped the background to a hard board with yellow tape and using a wet-on-wet method dropped in the yellow and pink colors and let them blend. Once totally dry, I removed it from the hard board and splatter in my Splat Box with Puffy Heart watercolor paint and the Tim Holtz Splatter Brush. Works perfectly!

The sentiment "Happiness" was stamped with Altenew's Obsidian Black Ink and sprinkled with clear embossing powder and heat set. I fussy cut around the letters - I really like that organic look. The inside sentiment is such a lovely hand written font and I always use Altenew's Obsidian Black Ink - you can't beat the dark black crisp image. Both are from the Celebrations set.

I should mention is that to prevent warpage on watercolor paper, here are my favorite techniques:

1) Tape paper to a hard board and wet on both sides of the paper. Once painted, I  let air dry;

2) Place the panel under a full size block and put a heavy object on it. I use my basket of acrylic blocks. Leave it until you need it - several days or longer;

3) Run it through a laminator with 2 plain sheets of copy paper;

4) Run it through your die cutting machine with a metal shim and between plain copy paper;

4) Use a good double sided adhesive tape to adhere watercolor panels to a heavyweight card base (At least 110 lb. such as Neenah Classic Crest Solar White). 

Thank you for joining me with Altenew and Color Throwdown #628. Therese is right about a color challenge being a good jumping off point for inspiration!

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