Altenew - Garden Treasures

Hello!

Well I can't say that I'm sorry to be nearing the end of this week, the weather in the UK has been simply horrid, very wet and grey and even a tad cold! Considering it's July tomorrow that's very poor showing. I expect the sun to pull his socks up and work harder next week, or I'll be having a few sharp words with him.

Anyway, this is a first for me, I've dipped my toe into the waters that are Altenew Stamps. I don't really colour flowers much at all normally, but I've seen so many gorgeous work with these beautiful stamps lately, that I just had to try.

So I purchased a lovely stamp set called Garden Treasuers, that seemed fairly versatile and set to work making a couple of cards. This was actually the 2nd card I made, but I will share the other with you at a later date.

This is what I made, I was pretty happy in all with the result.

First of all I took some Strathmore Bristol Smooth paper and prepped it with my anti-static tool. Then I stamped the larger flower in Versamark ink, and heat embossed it with Altnew Crisp Embossing Powder in Antique Gold. Then I re-prepped and stamped again after masking off my first image with a mask made from a post it note, I heat embossed again, following with the smaller flowers and the leaf. You do have to be a bit careful as the slight tackiness from the post it can get left on the paper and attract the embossing powder if you're not careful. I used my Misti to stamp to make the positioning easier.

Once all my stamping and embossing was complete I coloured the image with my Zig markers.

Once I was happy with the result I set aside to dry while I prepared my background.

I took some Tim Holtz watercolour paper and blended a mix of Worn Lipstick, Abandoned Coral and Dried Marigold, concentrating the deeper pinker colour at the bottom and the lighter orangey peach colour towards the top, getting a nice ombre effect.

Then I sprinkled and flicked some droplets of water, let stand for a few seconds and blotted off with a paper towel. Finally I flicked some gold paint on it randomly and then spayed lightly with a gold Glimmer Mist. This gives the card a lovely lustre which sadly doesn't show up to well on camera. I dried with my heat tool and then left it to completely dry while I prepared the rest of my card.

I took some smooth white cardstock and cut it to 11" x 4.25" scored at 5.5" and folded in half to make my top folding card base/

I fussy cut my stamped and coloured image, this is quite easy when you emboss.

I took my fully dried background and cut it to size with a Double Stitched Rectangle die from MFT Stamps, then prepped it with my anti static tool, and stamped the Thank You sentiment from MFT Stamps'You Give Me Butterflies stamp set and heat embossed with the same gold embossing powder.

I adhered this to my card base with some craft foam in between, then popped my flowers on with some foam tape to give them a little dimension.

Finally I added a few sequins from Lucy's Little Things, Tropical Paradise shaker selection.

I do hope you like my card for today, it's a bit different from my normal type, but I really like it .

 I'm off for a meal and a few glasses of something nice after work tonight with my lovely friend Jane, so I can put the weather firmly behind me.......or at least not care very much about it lol! 

Thanks so much for dropping by!