Hello everyone! Welcome!

Today’s lesson is all about color and bringing some vibrancies into your projects. This class was held by Therese Calvird, and if you have been following me along, you have most likely heard of her and her brilliant designs.

As much as I love Therese’s work and creations, today’s design is not inspired by her work exactly, but by what she says:

“If you are not sure about color combinations, start by keeping it very simple. Having a bright color and add a neutral is the way to go”

THERESE CALVIRD

So, I took her word for it!

When I started this program, my goal was to use all the stamps I have been collecting and never got a chance to use. In one of those stamp sets I stumble upon a Mini Inspiration Guide that Altenew sends with certain stamp sets. There was one card/design that stood out to me. It is is fabulous card on the right created by Jenny Colacicco, and it totally matches what Therese has thought us! So, I decided to use this as an inspiration for my cards.

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For today I created two cards and the reason why is simple, I couldn’t decide which color combination to pick, so, I picked two I like the most! I first started off with creating die cuts. I cut up some frames, sentiments and stamped images. The stamp set that I used today is called Torch Ginger by Altenew. This stamp set is part of their fabulous “Build-A-Flower” series. For creating backgrounds I used a Watercolor 36 Pan Set by Altenew. For a first combination I used Sunkissed & Bamboo, and for the other combination I used Citrus Burst & Crimson. These watercolors also match their inks, in case you didn’t know; that is one thing I love about Altenew, everything matches!

Next it was time to color. I put some water on my watercolor paper first and started adding the pigment. Now, this was a mistake, but I just had to keep on going. That water totally warped my paper and made watercolor pigments run off towards the edges of the paper, which made everything so uneven. I grabbed my heat gun and started drying the paper. And this totally saved the project. And, I learned from my mistakes! These colors were also not good for bending, which, at the time of choosing the colors I didn’t think of. So I had to be really careful how I added the pigment to the paper. I kept the brush wet enough which helped for the bristles to hold the color better. This is why is important to use good quality brushes. It truly helps a lot! So, I just kept adding color and drying in between each layer. To achieve these vibrant colors, it probably took 3 to 4 layers of pigment, but it was totally worth it! Since I used a heat gun to speed up the process of drying, it didn’t take that long. I then just simply glued panels onto the card bases, added my die cuts and sentiment strips and the cards were done! You probably realized that I did not use the first sentiment I cut. That is because that sentiment was too intricate for this design it was just simply lost among the flowers. A nice and simple sentiment strip helped divide the colors and create a cleaner look.

I am so simply stunned how these cards turned out! Truly vibrant, even more so in real life and perfect for any occasion and gender. I hope you liked today’s post and designs I came up with.

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See you soon with a new post!

Cheers!