Altenew May Inspiration Challenge

 I recently signed up for an Altenew Dreamy Watercolor class that is being taught by Sarah Simon - The Mint Gardener.  A collaboration between The Mint Gardener and Altenew resulted in this beautiful stamp set - Garden Bouquet.  Right now this stamp set is only available with the purchase of the class found HERE.  The main image in the set is large and covers an entire 5x7 panel.  

I stamped the image in Obsidian ink and heat set with clear embossing powder.  I watercolored the image.  I let it dry and came back and added more color.  Let it dry and then added metallic watercolor to the leaves and flowers.  I used the Fine Tulle stencil with buttercream to add a little dimension to the background.  I finished by adding gold splatters from the Metallic watercolor set and Jet black splatters from the 36 pan watercolor set. 

This card is my entry into Altenew's May Inspiration Challege.  I took my inspiration from both the image and the colors.  In the image the tulips have pink and oranges so I gave my flowers multiple colors. My large florals are similar to the inspiration colors - as close as I could get using the watercolors.  I am really pleased with how this card turned out.

How do you think I did? 

Products used:  All Altenew unless otherwise noted

Garden Bouquet stamp set - comes with Dreamy Watercolor Flowers class
36 pan watercolor set

5x7 watercolor cardstock - cold pressed

Essential Sentiments - hot foiled in gold on black

Metallic watercolor set

Fine Tulle stencil

Small blending brush, micro blending brush

Buttercream ink cube

Pinkfresh Gems - clear with gold dust

My affliate link to Altenew

AECP Level 3 - Creative Coloring with Erum

 My last Altenew class for Level 3 in AECP is "Creative Coloring with Erum - Advanced Techniques" taught by Erum Tasneem.  This class covers many different ways to color.  From creative texture with embossing pastes and glitter to use of watercolor paints and alcohol markers - 6 different lessons and lots of inspiration - Erum gives you lots of examples of "Creative Coloring".

All of the products I used for these cards are from Altenew - except for colored cardstock from my stash.  For my first cards, I focused on the 2nd lesson which was "Playing with Texture".  In this lesson we applied embossing paste through a stencil (Bursting Dahlia) and on one of the images we added glitter to the embossing paste.  Then set the panels aside to dry.  Once they were dry, I got out my Altenew 36 color watercolor paint set and started adding color.  For the embossing paste with NO Glitter panel I did a rainbow of colors on the Dahlia petals and finished with same color of splatter around those petals. Once that was dry, I spritzed and splattered with Iridescent Shimmer Spray before adding my sentiment and clear dots.  

The second panel with the glitter I also watercolored but chose cool colors and tried a little of the dripping water technique around the edges of the dahlia.  As per my usual MO, I spritzed and splattered Iridescent Shimmer spray before adding a sentiment and black enamel dots.  This was a fun technique that I will need to play with more to be more confident in the process.

For my next card, I focused on Lesson 5 - Splatter Watercolor technique.  I started by embossing my floral image - Paint a Flower - Fashion Monger Dahlia - onto watercolor cardstock.  Then I wet the floral portions and splattered pinks and oranges - I did this numerous times drying in between to get the colors more vibrant.  I masked off the flowers and did the same with the leaves in shades of green. 

Once I had these where I wanted them, I went back to lesson 1 - adding detail to stamped images - in this lesson it was about using markers to add details, but I reached for my Woodless Colored pencils to add subtle shading and details to the flowers.  I finished this card by fussy cutting the bouquet and foam mounting it to a piece of green cardstock that I had stenciled the Sunburst onto in a slightly darker shade of green.  Once that was adhered, I added splatters in white and Puffy Heart.  This card was finished with 2 sentiments from the Bold Sentiment stamp set - one of my favorites.  The splatter technique is fun and a great way to "loosely" watercolor and get a really unique and fun looking image.

I think this is the last class I have to take before preparing for my Level 3 final - teaching a workshop.  Wish me luck...