Donna T Crafting: AECP Level 2

Today, I have a confession to make. I started card making about 25 years ago. Back then, there were no die cutting machines, so fussy cutting and masking was something that was taught in intermediate card making classes. And I could never get the hang of masking. Then again, we did not have stamping platforms either, so using a block and hoping that everything lined up with red rubber stamps on wood blocks was always a wish and a prayer for me.

So, when I read what this course was, I already had my defenses up. However, the card making tools have come a long way during that 15 year break I took from it. I have to continually remind myself of this. And I'm really glad I opened up to this today!! This course gave a lot of great ideas and I'm pretty sure I'll be trying several in the future.

For my project, I decided to use the Altenew Build-A-Flower: Bearded Iris Stamp Set. This is one of my favorites!! I started my stamping my ideas on a scrap piece of paper to get an idea of how I would layer this stamp. Then, I stamped two flower images and 4 leaves onto some Mask-It tape. I fussy cut these out, cutting on the inside edge of the line to that the images would flow together.

I took my 4 x 5 1/4" panel of cardstock and stamped my flower I wanted on top in black ink. I put a mask on this and then stamped the flower I wanted behind this one. I also put a mask over this as well.

Then I proceeded to stamp my leaves coming off the flowers and put masks on each of these. When I was done, I had my entire collage stamped in black ink and then covered by masks.

I covered all the images because I wanted to lightly stencil a background. I took a leaf stencil from my stash and used some very light green ink. I used a paper pouncer and pounced on the ink, putting slightly more in the middle and working my way out to a lighter amount of ink.

Once done with that, it was time to start layering on color on my leaves and flowers. I started with the last leaf I stamped because it was overlapped by another leaf. I used the 2 layering stamps using green inks. After that leaf was done, I was able to take off the masks of the other 3 leafs and do the layering green color on those.

Next came the flowers. I started with the last flower I stamped (or my flower in the back). I added the layers of color as indicated on the package. This flower is just gorgeous!!!

One item I forgot to mention. When I chose my card panel, I picked cardstock with a texture. This did cause me a little bit of an issue. When I would stamp on my base layers of color, they would come out splotchy.

To remedy this, I would put some ink from my inkpad on my glass mat. I would also put a little water on my glass mat. I took a small paint brush and picked up a little water and some ink and started blending this on the image. It took a little time and some patience, but I think it did blend out beautifully. I was careful not to get too much water, using just enough to make the ink blend. Also, I only had to do this for the first layer and a little bit of the second layer.

Once my flowers were done, it was time to put on the finishing touches. I have just gotten a hot foil machine and have been creating some sentiments, so I chose one of those on white cardstock. I took my paper pouncer I used before and put some green ink over the foiling, just to take away the harsh white look. I put this on foam tape and adhered it to the bottom of my card.

Then I put some antique gold pearls on the card to tie in with the sentiment and to give a little bling.

I really enjoyed making this card and masking tape available these days make masking so much easier. I think I will be doing quite a bit more in the future. I hope you will give it a try as well.

Happy Crafting.

Donna T.

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