AECP Level 2 Card 1 - Beyond Basic Backgrounds

 Welcome back to my blog! I passed Level 1 of the Altenew Educators Certification Program and I'm ready to share with you another 10 cards which I have made for Level 2. Some techniques I have tried before but some were new to me but I have found this to be the most fantastic way to stretch my creativity and push me beyond my comfort zone! There will be 10 separate blog posts for each technique. I hope you enjoy each post and find some inspiration from my work.

For this first card, I chose to create a rainbow background using 6 Distress Oxide inks blended onto 80 lb Ninah Solar White cardstock. I then used the Water Bleaching technique to create the design.

The colours I used were Kitsch Flamingo, Spiced Marmalade, Squeezed Lemonade, Twisted Citron, Tumbled Glass and Wild Lilac. I used an ink blending brush to apply a soft layer of colour an making sure that I went back over an area twice to intensify the colour and then to blend two adjacent colours together to form a smooth transition and soft blend. 

When I was happy with this blend I decided to use the Altenew Statement Flowers stamp set https://altenew.com/products/statement-flowers-stamp-set because it is a large floral outline design with lots of open spaces which would allow the background colours to still show up well. 

The technique is similar to the Alcohol Lift Technique but this uses plain water instead. I used my Mini Misti Stamping Tool so that I could stamp the image multiple times until I was happy with the intensity of the image. Also, because I used water-reactive inks for this technique, the water spritzed onto the stamp is then transferred to the background and "lifts" off some of the ink. The image is initially not very visible but with repeated stamping it slowly emerges as a sort of ghost image. 

This is a great way to quickly colour flowers if you are not too keen on using other colouring mediums to colour in an image. 

I trimmed 1/8" off the A2 panel on all sides and matted it onto a black layer to help define and frame the whole image. I stamped the sentiment from the same stamp set using Versafine Onyx Black ink and then applied clear embossing powder and heat set the sentiment. A few black enamel dots added the finishing touches and tied in with the black border. 

Here is a close up of the card.