Blue Hydrangeas For You – Mixed Media Card

Hey there Crafty Friends!

Today I am posting a project for the AECP Level 1 Class – All About Layering 2 taught by Nicole Picadura.  You might be wondering what happened to All About Layering 1 but don’t worry, it’s coming.  I just decided to do this one first as I had the Garden Hydrangea stamp set and wanted to use it. This is my second AECP class.  You can read about my first class here.

Inspiration

There is a lot of helpful tips and tricks in this class for layering up your stamped images, especially floral images like this Garden Hydrangea set.  I love hydrangeas and have a beautiful blue one in my garden that looks very much like the one in my card right now, though the colours are starting to darken now that it is autumn.

Overview of my card process

How gorgeous are these flowers when they are all stamped up and layered?  I used my Tim Holtz stamp platform to do my stamping, and I decided to stamp in three different colourways – the pink, the blue and the teal, using all Altenew ink cube sets.  I stamped the leaves in Parrot ink for all layers as I like making leaves this way as it makes it look like you’ve used more than one ink but in fact, you have used only one.  I die cut all the flowers and leaves and then did a little extra colouring with my Polychromos to add some highlights.  Then I played around with the flowers deciding how I wanted them to look and how many I wanted to use!  Not all of them!

I made these backgrounds for the Irresistable Inking Techniques class yesterday and they looked so lovely on my table that I decided to use another one for this card.  I tried each different coloured background with each of the hydrangea flowers to see which one spoke to me. I was so sure it was going to be the Fresh Lemon but in the end I went for the Turquoise background and the teal hydrangeas.

As you know, I like making big cards, and this is another one – so I was able to comfortably fit three of the hydrangeas and some leaves on to the panel and still have room at the bottom to stamp a sentiment.  I used this “for you” sentiment from the Garden Hydrangea set and stamped it with Versafine Onyx Black ink and then dusted it with a Wow Clear Embossing Powder and heat set it. You can see a close up of it below, and how it makes it extra shiny compared to stamping it in black ink alone.

Once everything was glued down to my panel, I attached it to a Dark Chocolate card base, and then as a final touch, added some Nuvo Drops in Caribbean Ocean in all the little flower centres.

Thoughts

I really love the colours in this card, and the beautiful hydrangeas.  The multiple layers adds so much dimension and depth to the flowers and I enjoyed making every part of the card.  I hope you enjoyed reading about this card and that you find inspiration from it.

PROJECT RECIPE:

Altenew – Garden Hydrangea stamp and dies, Inks – Deep Blue Seas, Sweet Dreams, Cherry Blossom mini cube sets, Parrot,
Versafine Clair ink – Onyx Black
Gina K – Dark Chocolate cardstock
From stash: white cardstock, background from previous class
Nuvo Deluxe Adhesive
Nuvo Drops – Caribbean Ocean
Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils

FYI Here’s a list of the Classes for Level 1:

.All About Layering 1
.All About Layering 2
.Clean & Simple Boutique Cards
.Easy Ink Blending Techniques
.For The Guys
.Let It Shine
.Celebration: Stencil Techniques
.Seasonal Scene Building
.Easy Die Cutting Techniques
.Irresistible Inking Techniques

Entered in the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge