Hello everyone and Happy New Year!

What is your New Year’s resolution? I believe most of us had plenty of time to think of it and I hope you came up with a good one.

And speaking of resolutions, I have one of my own that I would love to share with you. I have recently joined one of the most awesome programs, and that is a program for becoming an Altenew Educator. So, for all of you who have never heard of Altenew, Altenew is one of the US companies that specialized in making stamps and inks for professional card makers. It is one of the leading brands in the card making industry and most of their products are made in the US. I have been a huge fan of their products and you have seen me use them many times. And now I have been granted an opportunity to be a part of their family.

From today on, you will be seeing a lot of new posts, hopefully daily , for each class that I take and every card that I make. :) And I would like to mention that most of the supplies that I will be using are from Altenew.

I hope you enjoy this journey with me and let’s see how it goes!

Ok, so, for this project I picked up Rose Blossom stamp and die set. And the inks that I used to create this card are Pink Pearl, Coral Bliss, Vineyard Berry, Heart Beat, Forest Glades, Fresh Leaf and Evergreen.

Positioned the stamps into my MISTI stamping tool which helped me with making several of these images at once. Aside from stamping several images at once, this tool is great for double stamping as well as stamp layering, which is what I did here.

Once my stamping was done, It was time to die cut the images. For this I used coordinating dies and a Spellbinders Platinum 8 die cutting machine. For all of you who do not like to invest in coordinating dies, these images can easily be cut with a pair of scissors. Some people find it easier and faster to cut it by hand. Myself, personally, am not that good at fussy cutting and I think that my impatience gets the best of me, so I often gravitate towards the dies. One more thing about die cutting, when it comes to Altenew dies, they are definitely compatible with most die cutting machines most crafters use today. Since these dies are not intricate, I decided to go with my manual machine, but as I said, any die cutting machine will work here. After the cuts were done, it was time for the assembly. For the card base I used 100 lbs premium card stock from the Cardstock Warehouse and it is called Pale Grey.

Next, I arranged my cuts on the card base to make sure I like the layout, and after I was done with a layout I used a super special product: Press N’ Seal by Glade to collect all my pieces before I attach them to my card base. This is a wonderful product to use for things like this; it is tacky enough to hold your pieces together and it will not tear up your paper. It is absolutely safe to use and it is cost effective. I added foam tape onto the back of my die cut images and just in case, I added some liquid glue as well. I have heard that overtime foam tape loses its tackiness and things fall apart, or just falls apart in the mail, so this was just one extra step that you do not have to do unless you want to. And if you are looking for a perfect glue for your paper crafts I recommend Art Glitter Glue. And this is when I realized that I made a big mistake. Once I glued my die cuts on the card base I realized that I forgot to add stamping to my card base, and to leave enough space for a sentiment. But, at this point it was too late to change thing and I did not want to waste what I already created so I decided to make the best out of it. I still added some stamping to my design and I was able to add a sentiment as well. I made this sentiment black so it could stand out and hopefully balance the business of the flowers.

At the end, the card did not turn out as I intended but it still looks good and impressive. I guess this is to say that I had to practice more on some simpler and minimalistic designs. But that is yet to come.

And here is the finished product. What do you think?

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