This is my last class for the Altenew Educator Certification Program. It’s been so fun learning new techniques and making cards on this journey. In all, I’ve taken 24 of their classes and learned something in every one. For today’s card I chose to do a Christmas card using the Leaves & Berries stencil from Altenew.

First I chose a brown cardstock and adhered my stencil to it. Then I used Altenew’s embossing paste over the stencil. I wanted to some how color the leaves differently than the berries but that proved difficult, so I decided to use some alcohol ink. I used two shades of green for the leaves and one shade of the red for the berries. While the stencil was still in place I carefully dripped the alcohol ink onto the leaves and berries. I had to be careful to only put a small amount of ink on the embossing paste, otherwise it would soak up into the paper too much. When doing this technique you need to work fast because the embossing paste can dry quickly enough that it would be difficult to remove it from the stencil. After I added the ink I took the stencil off and soaked it in water to make removing the paste easier. I set the stenciled panel aside to dry for about 30 minutes. After the paste was dry I cut down the brown cardstock to create a 2” by 4” panel which I mounted on green cardstock. I adhered the panel to the left side of the card base. I stamped the sentiment in green using my MISTI, then stamped it again in VersaMark ink and embossed with clear embossing powder. I love the unique way this card turned out.