Mindy Made It

 I am so pleased with the look of the ink blended background on this Hanukkah card, made with Altenew’s Love and Light stamp and die set.  It really gives the impression of the candles glowing behind the die cut menorah (which I popped up for extra effect).   The candle glow background was stamped in Buttercup by Wendy Vecchi for Ranger Ink.  The menorah was stamped in Versafine Onyx Black and colored in with alcohol markers. The overall effect is a clean and simple holiday card.

 Here is my inlaid die cut card, a technique taught in the Level 1 Easy Die Cutting techniques class.  I was excited to learn this technique because although die cutting is one of the first things I learned about card making and scrapbooking, I had never known about it or tried to inlay die cut elements into a piece.   I used the Whimsical Flowers Stamp and die set, with a mix of stamp colors, including abandoned coral and picked raspberry distress inks from Ranger for the flowers new sprout and pear tart from Memento for leaves. The smaller flowers and flower centers are stamped in mustard seed and fossilized amber from Ranger.   Instead of just inlaying the flowers and leaves I stamped and cut, I used foam tape to make them pop.  I also added some iridescent pearls for some bling on the sentiment panel and in some flower centers. I took the sentiment from an unbranded set in my stash and matted it in red, a color not used in stamping but which coordinates with the overall picture. Th

 I’m really loving my courses in the AlteNew Educator Certification Progam (AECP), to the point that I can’t wait to try each new technique. In Class 4, the focus is on clean and simple styling, patterns, metallic accents and faux letter press.  I started with a pattern using a bouquet from the Celebrations Stamp set. I stamped the outline of the bouquet horizontally several times using black Versafine Ink, which, being waterproof, won’t react or run with watercolors.  I used a simple palette of pink and baby blue for the flowers with two tones of green for leaves.  The sentiment was stamped in black on a panel with edges also inked in black.  Center placement with foam tape for dimension looked best, I thought. Finally, three gold pearls add a bit of bling. For clean and simple styling, I used the middle and small sized butterflies from Painted Butterfly set.  I learned in the class to start at the midpoint and that’s where the first blue butterfly went.  I thought it would be fun to

 On to the third class of the AlteNew Education Certification Program: Stencil Techniques! In Lesson 1, we were challenged to make a stencil from a die cut in our stash.  I took my AlteNew mini delight feather stamp and die cut set and decided to give it a whirl!  I die cut feathers randomly in a standard A2 size panel (4.25” x 5.5”) and then used that as my stencil on another panel.  I used Poppy color Ranger Ink throughout for a monochrome look. Then I stamped the feather outline over the stenciled shapes, and I was really pleased with the whimsical look of having colored outside the lines!  I added the solid tip to each stenciled feather and also stamped some additional feather outlines around the edges of my panel.  Popped on the sentiment from the set and matted on matching designer paper before attaching it to the card base.  I love the look of this card Next, I stenciled a background using AlteNew’s Playful Patterns (stencils 2, 3 and 4, using the dotty stencil twice with differ