Altenew Celebrating Parents Blog Hop

I am very happy to be joining in as a guest designer with Altenew for the Celebrating Parents Card Drive.  Altenew is hosting a special Celebrating Parents Blog Hop for you today.  They are hosting this very important cause and there are many stops along the hop for you to see many beautiful cards!  You should have arrived here from Alex Syberia's Blog. I have six cards to share with you today, but I want to share a bit of information about this very worthy cause first.

Our goal is to send cards for the elderly that live in nursing homes or shelters to let them know they’re not forgotten. Please encourage people to check out the Celebrating Parents Card Drive and join this great cause by sending in cards.

We would like to invite you to participate in a special card drive to help bring some love and happiness to others!

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are approaching and this can be a difficult time for seniors who are in nursing homes or shelters. We want these important people to feel loved, celebrated, and honored — and we need your help!

Altenew will be collecting handmade cards between March 3rd and April 29th, and each donor is eligible to win one of FIVE $30 Altenew gift certificates! If you use #AltenewCardDrive when you share your Celebrating Parents cards on social media, you are entered to win one of THREE additional $15 gift certificates! The winners will be announced on Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 12th, 2019.

Here are some important reminders and guidelines:

• Cards may be for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Sentiments should be generic – a specific greeting such as “so happy you’re my dad” wouldn’t really work.
• Please sign your name on the inside of each card. You may also include a note and where you are from.
• Kindly put each card in an envelope and make sure they are not sealed.
• To enter the giveaway, please include a post-it note with your name and email address.

We would love for you to use Altenew products, but of course, your cards may use products from other companies!

Send your cards to:

Altenew 

ATTN: Card Drive 

6179 East Molloy Road,

East Syracuse, NY 13057

If you have any questions or would like us to send cards to a local shelter or a nursing home near you, please email us at support@altenew.com with the subject line Celebrating Parents Card Drive.

We have chosen four stamp sets that are great for your Mother’s Day and Father’s Day projects: Best Dad, Painted Rose, Extra Special, Lotus, Cross Stitch Flower, and Best Mom. 20% of the profits from these stamp sets until Father’s Day, June 16th, 2019, will be donated to the Food Bank of Central New York to support seniors in need.  This is another great way for you to show the support and the love in our crafting community! 

Like many others in the paper crafting industry, I have been playing a lot with Alcohol Inks and have many backgrounds created and ready to use.  This particular one was created on Yupo paper but sometimes I use Glossy Cardstock.  This one was created with Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks in Mermaid and Clover and Pinata Brass Alcohol Ink on Yupo.  I love the more vibrant gold of the Pinata vs. the gold mixative that is available so I've switched over.  I don't have a technique or special way of creating them, I just play until I get a look that I like. Sometimes I use Alcohol Blending Solution and other times I use 91% or 99% Rubbing Alcohol.  If you want to try these inks out, just get a few colors that you like and experiment before investing in a whole bunch of them.  You all know that I like lots of Gold, so I almost always include it.  I have the Silver in Pinata Ink as well, but it just isn't nearly as dramatic as the brass, so I don't use it often.  

For my first card, I stamped a few of the blooms and the leaves from Beautiful Day.  The blooms were stamped using the three darkest shades (Aqualicious, Teal Cave, & Galactic Stream) from the Sweet Dreams Collection so that the color would be very vibrant and pop from the card base.  For the leaves I used the Sea Shore collection of inks, again using the three darkest shades (Volcano Lake, Lagoon, and Emerald).  Once the stamping had time to dry, I treated them with powder tool and then being very careful to line them up, stamped the outline images on both, the leaves and the blooms using Versamark with Altenew Antique Gold Embossing Powder.  Next, I die cut everything.  

Next, I cut a white panel using the Creative Edges Lace Die on both the top and bottom of the piece then stamped my greeting and heat set that as well.  I started playing with the arrangement of the flowers and decided I needed a few little sprigs in there, so I stamped one of the sprigs from Wings Of Hope several times and heat embossed them as well.  Then I die cut them to add to my arrangement.  I do love to use the Glad Press N Seal when I get my arrangement just how I want it so that I don't have to try to recreate it from a photo.  

My next cards used the leftover leaf and bloom from the first card. Since there was less "floral", I added both a white a gold die cut piece using the same Creative Edges Lace Die, making one narrower than the other so that You can see both pieces.  I heat set the sentiment from Altenew Extra Special which is geared toward Moms.  

For this next card, I stamped the blooms using Warm and Cosy Family of inks, again in the three darkest shades ( Orange Cream, Autumn Blaze, and Firebrick).  The leaves were stamped way back in August when I was making a birthday card for my Daughter and I only had one set of Altenew Greens at that time, so I know they were stamped using the Green Fields Ink Collection.  Those particular leaves were from the Build-A-Flower Rose Set.  Since Beautiful Day Blooms have always reminded me of wild roses, and the colors were perfect so I opted to use them for this card.

I cut a gold mat, a gold-edged piece and then cut a white strip that would fit perfectly across the gold edged piece. I stamped in Versamark and then heat set using the same Antique Gold Embossing Powder.

Next up in a more clean and simple style, I used Altenew Extra Special Stamp and Die Bundle.  The backgrounds were some that I had made while taking classes to become a Certified Altenew Educator.  I used a brayer technique taught in one of the classes.  To make these backgrounds pop a little more, I ran them through the We R Memory Keepers Gemstone Embossing Folder to add texture to my background panels.

As before, I stamped all of the colored layers, let that dry, then went back and heat embossed the outline of the floral with Antique Gold.  I love adding little gems to my flowers centers for a little bit of sparkle.  This card uses the new Spring Bouquet 6 Ink Collection which has three new pinks and three new greens.

For this set of blooms, I used Pocketful of Sunshine Ink Collection.   The green iridescent sequins along with the gemstone in the flower centers added just the pop of fun and sparkle I wanted.

This last card uses one of the many alcohol inked backgrounds that I made last winter and then ran it through my Minc Machine to add a bit of gold foil.  That's why there are two views for this card (so you can hopefully see the little bit of gold on there).

Altenew

Svitlana Shayevich

Virginia Lu

Agnieszka Malyszek

TaeEun Yoo

Seeka

Heather Hoffman

Nancy McClelland 

Laura Jane

Ashlea Cornell 

Anna Komenda

Amber Rain Davis

Tania Ahmed

Aya Elsheshtawy

Patricia Roebuck

Alex Syberia

Vicki Finger (You Are Here)

Laura Volpes

Michelle Murray

Terri Koszler

We hope you can join us for this great cause. Thank you for those who made this possible. We feel truly blessed to have your support!  I personally appreciate it when you take the time to stop by and especially when you take time to comment!  I appreciate your support of my blog.  Your next stop on the hop is Laura Volpes.

Affiliate Links Used Whenever Possible

Altenew Antique Gold Crisp Embossing Powder Shop at: ALT	Altenew Beautiful Day Shop at: ALT	Altenew Beautiful Day Dies Shop at: ALT	Altenew Beautiful Day Stamp & Die Bundle Shop at: ALT
Altenew Build-A-Flower Rose Shop at: ALT	Altenew Creative Edges Lace Die Shop at: ALT	Altenew Extra Special Bundle Shop at: ALT	Altenew Extra Special Die Shop at: ALT
Altenew Extra Special Stamp Shop at: ALT	Altenew Green Fields Mini Cube Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Green Fields Oval Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Pocketful of Sunshine Mini Cube Set Shop at: ALT
Altenew Pocketful of Sunshine Oval Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Sea Shore Ink Cube Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Sea Shore Oval Ink Pads Shop at: ALT	Altenew Spring Bouquet 6 Cube Set Shop at: ALT
Altenew Spring Bouquet 6 Oval Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Sweet Dreams Mini Cube Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Warm & Cozy Mini Cube Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Warm & Cozy Oval Set Shop at: ALT
Altenew Wings of Hope Bundle Shop at: ALT	Altenew Wings of Hope Die Set Shop at: ALT	Altenew Wings of Hope Stamp Set Shop at: ALT	Arches Hot Pressed Watercolor Paper Shop at: SSS
Glad Press N Seal Shop at: SSS	Tim Holtz Ranger Alcohol Pearls - Set of 12 Shop at: SSS	Tim Holtz/Ranger Alcohol Ink Blending Solution Shop at: SSS	Tonic 6 Inch Personal Trimmer Shop at: SSS
Versamark Ink Shop at: SSS	Wagner Heat Tool Shop at: SSS	Yupo Paper 74 lb. Shop at: SSS