Feather Fun

Welcome back to my blog! I finished up my next level 2 Altenew Educator Certification Program class.  This one was called In the Mood for Color.  This class goes into detail about the meanings and feelings evoked when you use certain colors.  I thought it was pretty cool!

I decided I wanted to try my hand at making a card that evokes happiness and good feelings.  Orange is the color for the job!

I started with a piece of Bristol smooth cardstock cut to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".  I also pulled out my mini ink blending tools, sponges and the new Golden Sunset mini ink cubes from Altenew.  I love the Altenew ink families when you want to make sure your colors all go together.  I don't find myself using yellow and orange inks very often but these are SO pretty!  I started with the lightest color, Sunray.  I loaded up my blending sponge and started blended in a diagonal line across the cardstock.  I then moved on to Chamomile, Snapdragon and finally Marigold.  Now, this doesn't look so great...not yet anyways.

The trick is layers!  I worked my way back and forth a few times in order to get vibrant and smooth colors.  Once I was happy with the results, I squirted it lightly with water.  I let it sit for 30 seconds or so and then blotted it up.  I dried it with the heat gun.  Next I gave it a quick spray with an iridescent shimmer spray.  I dried this as well with the heat gun.

I'm so in love with this panel!  On to the next steps.  I treated the panel liberally with anti-static powder.  Next I stamped the feather image from Altenew's Happy Dreams stamp set randomly on the panel with Versafine black ink.  Then I sprinkled it with clear embossing powder and melted it with the heat gun.  Next I grabbed the spots cluster from the same stamp set.  I stamped it several times over the panel and melted the embossing powder.  At this point I felt like I needed the spots to fill in more of the spaces but the feather were in the way.  I could have gone ahead and created some masks to cover the feathers but I felt a bit lazy.  I just tore some scrap pieces of paper and held them in place as I stamped the rest of the dots.

I went ahead and trimmed the panel down to 4" x 5 1/4".  Now I needed a few more pieces for my card.  I used a stitched circle die to cut out a 2 3/4" circle out of heavy vellum.  I treated it with anti-static powder.  I stamped the "Follow Your Dreams" sentiment, also from the Happy Dreams set, in VersaMark ink.  I didn't want the wand that is included as part of the sentiment so I simply covered it with a small scrap before inking it up.  Then I pulled it off the scrap before stamping down on the vellum.  I sprinkled white embossing powder over it, tapped off the excess and melted it with the heating tool.  

Next I cut a piece of black cardstock into a strip 1 1/2" x 4".  Then I used the largest edge dies from the Lawn Fawn Lacy Borders die set to cut both long sides of the strip. 

 I then glued it about an inch from the left side of the yellow panel.  I flipped the vellum circle over and used a glue pen to carefully apply the liquid glue behind the letters.  This is my trick to keep the adhesive from showing through the vellum.  Then I put it in place over the black strip.  

I found that I hadn't been quite as careful as I thought and you could see some of the glue.  To solve that I went around the left sides of the sentiment with an N3 gray Copic marker.  This added a nice little shadow AND hid the glue.  Problem solved!

I stamped one of the arrows onto white cardstock using the black VersaFine ink.  I sprinkled clear embossing powder over it and melted it with the heat tool.  I then used the matching Happy Dreams die set to cut out the arrow.  I used a little liquid glue on the back and glued it down.  I then glued the entire panel onto a black A2 sized card base.  All done!

This card makes me happy so I guess it did the job!

I had so much fun making the first card I had to make a second one!  This one is almost an exact opposite of the first card.  Where I used black on the first card, I used white.  Where I used white on the first card, I used black on the second.  You get the idea.  

Here it is!

Here they are side-by-side.

And close up so you can see the shadowing around the sentiment on the black card.

Which version is your favorite?

Thanks for stopping by!
~Kristina

Supplies used: (Affilate links below at no cost to you)

Zig 2-Way Glue Pen - Squeeze & Roll Shop at: Dies R Us	Neenah Solar White Shop at: SBC	VersaMark Watermark ink pad Shop at: SBC	Ranger Super Fine White embossing powder Shop at: SBC
Tonic Studios-Retractable Craft Pick Shop at: SBC	Lawn Fawn Black Licorice Cardstock Shop at: SBC	Mini Ink Blending Tool Shop at: SBC	VersaFine Onyx Black ink pad Shop at: SBC
Altenew Happy Dreams stamps Shop at: Altenew	Altenew Happy Dreams dies Shop at: Altenew	Ranger Clear embossing powder Shop at: SBC	Altenew Golden Sunset mink ink cubes Shop at: Altenew
Lawn Fawn Lacy Borders dies Shop at: SBC