Altenew Inspiration Challenge

This month's Inspiration Challenge at Altenew is called "Class of 2017" and we can choose any of the year's 11 other challenges as our inspiration.  I chose the August 2017 Inspiration for my card.  It has been a while since I have had a chance to participate in the Altenew Challenge although it is one of my favorites.  The fun part is that I can enter as many times as I like and I plan to enter a few more times before the month is over. I hope I will have time to do at least 1 other card.

I struggle sometimes with making a card using colors not found in nature and this is one of those cards.  I love the colors but you would not find this color in nature on this flower.  I'm not sure there are any flowers this color anywhere, but I know I haven't seen everything.  I just like using pretty colors when I am making a card for my Mother-In-Law and I try to send her different things than I have previously sent.  My Sisters-In-Law, Brenda and Vickie, say she really enjoys looking at them and having them read to her.

I chose this color in part because I wanted to play along in the Altenew Challenge this month and also because I wanted to make something with this gorgeous teal and gold foiled paper that I have. This came from one of the Craft Smith Paper Pads that I got at Michaels on a Black Friday Special.  The whole collection is very tropical and lush but I will always be drawn to anything that has an Art Deco feel to it.  I love Art Deco and I have really been enjoying watching the Property Brothers At Home doing the renovations on Drew and Linda's home. I chose this paper as my starting point but I also had Altenew Beautiful Day on my desk.  I have used this set so often that I had accidentally torn the two most used stamps in the collection trying to peel them off an acrylic block so I had recently ordered a replacement set (on a Cyber Monday Deal).  Because I love this set so much, I wanted to make sure I ordered a replacement set, so both were sitting on my desk waiting to be swapped out.  I used my old set one more time to do this card.  At some time, Altenew might decide to discontinue this set, but I don't see it happening anytime in the foreseeable future; it's just too popular.

I started by stamping the bloom outline and the leaf outline in Versamark and heat setting it with Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder.  For all of the stamping on this card, I used the Altenew Sea Shore Ink Collection which are all of these beautiful shades of teal; Mountain Mist, Volcano Lake, Lagoon and Emerald.  These are available in the larger ink pads, but I have all of my Altenew Inks in Cubes.

I love the whole ink cube idea because it allows me to choose more than one brand of ink for my projects and also because the RA makes it difficult to hold on to the larger pads. Each brand and type of ink performs differently so you just have to know what you expect as far as performance and try one or two of them before you buy a whole set.  I tried a couple of the pink and red families of colors before I got more.  I love the colors and they are different than the other brands I have.  Plus the cubes come in collections that are already color coordinated for you for any layering images you might be stamping.  In this case, I did not have to do any double or triple stamping to get the color I wanted.  Just a single stamping although I did use the MISTI just in case. Because this set is so well loved, the ink sticks to the photo-polymer very well.  I'll have to break in a new set of stamps now but I'm glad to have a replacement set.  Thankfully, I hadn't messed up any of the dies.  You can also purchase the Beautiful Day Stamp & Die Bundle in the Altenew Shop which gives you a bit of a discount as of the writing of this post.

In Erum's beautiful card, she didn't say what ink colors she used and for my card I took a lot of liberties with the golden chartreuse color and just made mine gold.  I did not use any brown but we are to use the image as a starting point and go from there.  We don't need to copy it exactly.  I always find Erum's work just incredibly beautiful.

Thank you so much for coming by today to see my card.  I hope I've inspired you to think outside of the box a bit and try an unusual color scheme on a project of your own.  I linked the supplies I've used below for your convenience.

Stamper's Select White Cardstock Shop at: PTI	Simon Says Stamp Antique Gold Embossing Powder Shop at: SSS	Kokuyo Long Dot Runner Adhesive Shop at: SSS	Versamark Ink Shop at: PTI | SSS
Wagner Heat Tool Shop at: SSS	Ranger Multi Medium Matte Shop at: SSS	Teflon Bone Folder Shop at: SSS	Altenew Sea Shore Ink Cube Collection Shop at: SSS | ALT
Altenew Beautiful Day Shop at: SSS | ALT	Altenew Beautiful Day Dies Shop at: SSS | ALT