Hello creative friends! Today I’m sharing a card that I made after participating in Altenew Academy’s Polychromatic online course. This was another very good class. Several of the techniques used markers, and that’s probably my weakest medium to use, so I chose to make a card with a technique that would work with one of my Altenew Stamp Sets.

I was inspired by Lesson 4, which included two beautiful butterfly cards. The technique was watercoloring with similar colors, like pinks, violets and purples, or blues and teals. I used similar color combinations, but the big thing for me was that I did not only use the colors that are packaged together in the minicube sets. The colors I used for the main peony (Pink Diamond, Cosmic Berry, Grape Agate) all come from different sets. One of the reasons why I love Altenew inks is that you can purchased coordinating 4 piece minicube sets, where all of the colors are perfectly coordinated to compliment each other. This totally takes the guesswork out of selecting colors, and I suppose some might argue it takes the fun out of it as well! I find it helps me learn, and build confidence, until I’m ready to try something on my own.

I stamped the peony with the outline stamp first, and then used the same light pink color to stamp the first layer. This made it sort of difficult to see the outline in order to line up the next two stamp layers that I used, but I thought I got it close enough that it still looks nice.

For the background of my card, I stamped a couple layers of several of the leaves and the blossom directly onto the background panel. I used the lightest pink, Pink Diamond. I also used Wisteria, Hydrangea, and Ultraviolet which did come in the same minicube set. After the ink was dry, I ran the background through my die cut machine with a simple dotted embossing folder from my stash, to add some dimension. In the lesson, the instructor used a stitched rectangle die to add interest and texture to the white space.

I used one layer of the “hello” die from the Versatile Greetings set, and cut the sentiment out of paper that I had colored with the Ultraviolet ink pad. I really like the effect of stamping, and then dry embossing, to add texture. I don’t think I’ve done that before, or at least not very often. I also used the direct-to-paper method to color the border for my card with the Ultraviolet ink.

Up close, you can see that some of the pink ink on the flower is a little splotchy. I decided to leave it that way, again for interest and texture. Thank you for stopping by my blog. I appreciate you!

Altenew products used:
Altenew Peony Bouquet Stamp Set
Altenew Peony Bouquet Die Set
Altenew Versatile Greetings Die Set
Altenew Crisp Dye Ink Cubes – Pink Diamond, Cosmic Berry, Grape Agate, Wisteria, Hydrangea, Ultraviolet