Hello crafty friends! Today I’m sharing a card that I made after participating in Altenew Academy’s Irresistible Inking Techniques class.

I was inspired by the lesson on using an acrylic block as a background stamp. I had never tried that before. I happened to have a round acrylic block, and I thought that would be fun to use. Looking through my products, I found the Paint-A-Flower: Camellia Waterhouse outline stamp set. Each flower in the stamp was about the size of the acrylic block. I thought I would start my inking my circle block and stamping two circles with Warm Sunshine and Pink Pearl, and then stamp the flowers on top. I used watercolor paper, as I was pretty sure I would end up painting part of this card. I stamped the flowers in black ink, and then embossed with clear embossing powder, as the lesson suggested, to help keep the painting crisp.

I decided to paint the leaves with ink that I pressed out of the inkpads onto my craft mat, using the Green Fields Crisp Dye Ink set.. I applied the ink with a waterbrush. After I colored the leaves, I decided to leave the flowers as they were, simply colored with the acrylic block stamping. I used the acrylic block again to stamp the green background. Since the embossed edges of the outline stamp was raised, when I stamped the background with the acrylic block, the ink didn’t go all the way to the outline stamp, leaving a white highlight, which I liked.

I also used the spattering technique that was described in the course. As suggested, I created a mask for the flowers before adding the black and white spatters. I used gouache white paint and Ranger Distress Black Paint.

For the sentiment, I used the Fancy Hugs die, cutting one layer out of black cardstock, and two layers out of white cardstock, and stacking them up for dimension. I used a sub-sentiment from the stamp set as well, stamped in black in and embossed in clear. To finish the card, I added 3 orange gems and layered the panel on black cardstock, and then applied to my card base.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, I hope you try some different inking techniques – I’d love to see what you create! I appreciate you!

Altenew products used:
Paint-A-Flower: Camellia Waterhouse Outline Stamp Set
Fancy Hugs Die
Crisp Dye Ink Sets – Tea Party, Green Fields, Summer Afternoon