I passed my final challenge project and I am officially a level 1 Altenew Educator. I’m now working on my level 2 classes which I hope to finished before I leave for Michigan to see my family. My mom, sisters, and brother-in-law have all received both their COVID vaccine shots. My husband and I have gotten our first shots and will get the second in about 2 weeks. Then the beginning of April I’ll be flying to Michigan to see my family. Can’t wait. Hubby will be staying home but hopefully he’ll be seeing his family sometime this summer.

Ok, enough chatter, let’s get on with the cards. Today I took the Creative Watercolor Media class. We watercolored with re-inkers, ink cubes and inks sprays, among other things. I really loved the way my card turned out using the ink sprays. I only have 2 Altenew sprays, antique gold and antique silver, but I have Tattered Angel Gilmmer Mist in Hollyberry and Mistletoe. Obviously by the names they were designed for Christmas projects but I thought the colors would be perfect for the Layered Poppy flower. I stamped the flower, bud, and leaf on Arches hot press watercolor paper with Versamark and heat embossed with Gold embossing powder. I decided to use the hot press watercolor paper because it is much smoother that the cold press. In order to use the ink sprays for painting I spritz some onto a watercolor pallet. To paint the flower I painted, one leaf at a time, with clean clear water then dropped a small amount of the Hollyberry ink at the base of the flower where shadows would be. Then using a clean brush I spread the ink upward toward the tips of the flower. I love the way the ink spread into the wet flower and made “blooms.”

I did the same thing for the bud and leaves. To finish off the card I inked the edges with Versamark and heat embossed with the same gold as the flower. Then I mounted on cream cardstock before putting it on the card base. Even though I used “Christmas” colors I don’t think the card looksChristmas-y.

I loved the way this card looked so much I just had to make another one using the inks I already had out. I had a piece of squarish hot press watercolor paper left over from the last card that I wanted to use. Arches watercolor paper is quite pricey and I don’t like wasting any. I decided to use the flower from the Grateful Heart stamp set. I inked it up with Versamark ink and heat set it in gold, like the last card, in the corner of the watercolor paper. I then added leaves from the Beautiful Day stamp set and heat set them also. I painted the flower the same way as the last card. I trimmed the watercolor paper with gold heat embossing like the last card. Because the watercolor paper was square I had to do a different card design. I mounted the square watercolor paper on black cardstock. I then put a 1 inch of the same black cardstock down the left hand side of cream paper and added another thin strip of pink patterned paper. I mounted the square flower onto that then mounted it all on a card base.

Hopefully you can see a little of the shine in the center of the flower from the metallic ink sprays.