A New Card and a Little Update

Hello everyone! This is my second blog post for today so if you are looking for The Challenge #93, keep scrolling down. This card is for this week's Color Throwdown Challenge #453.

I had so much fun playing with Pattern Play Hexagons from Altenew yesterday.  I have several other projects in progress that will be coming in the next week or so, but there is just one for today.  I love the colors in the inspiration image so I really wanted to play along on this challenge.  There is bright Pink, Yellow and Green and as always any neutrals we like. In my case, the neutral is White as it often is.

The Pattern Play Hexagons Stamp Set is from Altenew's latest release and I had to have it.  I also want Pattern Play Diamonds.  Both sets are 6 x 8 stamp sets. Nicole Picadura designed these stamps and they are awesome.  The clear background stamp is large enough to cover an A2 card base going either direction. There are 6 other stamps that let you fill in whatever parts of the pattern you want and includes two sentiments as well.  I knew I'd want to heat emboss the background in Antique Gold so that is what I did yesterday morning.

You can see here the various parts that are included with the stamp set.  There's the hexagon, the diamond, the diamond row and the zig-zag row.  I have a MISTI Tool but I just did my stamping yesterday by hand with an acrylic block.  If I would have used either of the rows, I would have used the MISTI Tool. Since I was selectively stamping in only some random diamonds and hexagons it wasn't necessary to be so precise. There is no rhyme or reason to my stamping so don't look for a pattern as there isn't one there.  I used Altenew's Crisp Inks in Pink Diamond, Frayed Leaf and Lemon Tart from Papertrey Ink for my yellow.

I wish I would have thought to take a picture of just the background panel before I assembled the card, but I didn't. Next time I work with this set I will try to remember to do that for you.

Once I had my background stamped how I wanted it, I die cut it with the WPLUS9 Gift Card Layers Die.  I like that it is a full A2 Card front size as I love this pattern and didn't want to cut any of it off.  Next I heat embossed two of the flowers and two of the leaves from the Beautiful Day Stamp Set which continues to be a favorite.  Heck, all floral stamps are my favorites, but Beautiful Day has seen more use than any other set in my collection. I used the 2nd and 3rd detail layers in Pink Diamond and Pinkalicious from the Altenew Cherry Blossom Collection for the blooms with Frayed Leaf and Forest Glades for the leaves from the Green Fields Collection.  By misting each layer right after it was stamped, it helps to soften the color and let the two mix and mingle.  The Cherry Blossom Collection is one of the 3 new ink collections from Altenew's most recent release. I only have room to store one more collection so I have to be very choosy for which collections I want. I'll have to move one collection to a different storage area as soon as I add one more which I would say is highly likely at some point in the not too distant future.  I'm still wanting to add Tropical Forest Collection and Pocketful of Sunshine Collection to my ink color choices.

I had one tiny little spot where the embossing was a little messy but I just put that corner where I was planning to put the blooms to cover it up.  So this is how the card sits as of this posting. I like how it looks now but I'm thinking of adding some Crystals or sequins to the card.

I've gotten a few e-mails from folks commenting that I'm not blogging as much right now.  I'm not planning to slow down, but right now I'm taking a class and there is a lot of homework for it.  So I'm making just as many cards, but doing fewer blog posts.  The blog posts take a considerable amount of time. The class runs through the 2nd week in September, so it's only temporary.  I share nearly everything on Instagram so you can look for me there. There's a link just under my blogger profile. I will still be doing my Design Team posts for The Challenge each week and The Card Concept will be starting back just as my class is finishing up.

I'm also going to link this card up over at the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge this week with their theme of "Anything Goes".