Altenew April 2025 Inspiration Challenge

My first time trying the monthly inspiration challenge at Altenew and I am sliding in just under the gun on this one. Note to self...do the challenges at the first of the month.🤣

Here is my card for the April 2025 Inspiration Challenge 

When I saw Amy's photo I knew that the Altenew Mixed Foliage layering set was perfect for this challenge. I started out die cutting the Mixed Foliage flowers and leaves in Neenah white cardstock. I placed all of the die cut pieces on my Altenew 9x12 Sticky Mat to hold them in place while I added the ink blending.

Using the Altenew Small Blending Brushes I blended the flowers with Frosty Pink and Coral Berry from the Altenew Red Cosmos Fresh Dye Inks. For the flower centers I blended them using Toasted Mauve and Redwood from Altenew Woodland Escape Fresh Dye Inks. The leaves were then blended with Frayed Leaf and Frosted Glades from the Altenew Green Fields Fresh Dye Inks.

I die cut the hello sentiment from the Altenew Hello and Hugs Stamp & Die Bundle. The sentiment from the Hello and Hugs Stamp set was stamped on to the die cut in Versafine Clair Nocture ink. The small sentiment add-on is also from the Hello and Hugs Stamp set.

Using a 4.25" x 5.5" piece of Altenew Mountain Pine cardstock I embossed the panel with Altenew Connected 3D embossing folder so that I could bring in the darker background from Amy's photo.

This was fun and I will definitely have to do it again. Have you tried one of the inspiration challenges?

Mixed Media Class with Juliana and Mary

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I have a love-hate relationship with mixed media. I love the look you can get but I hate the mess I have to clean up. But I am trying to learn to let the hate part go and enjoy the creative process.In trying to fix my struggle with this medium, I try to do classes or follow videos.

These cards are from a class Juliana Michaels gave with Mary Polanco Designs.Well technically the backgrounds are from the class. Instead of saving them as references as Juliana suggested I turned mine into cards right away. 

The butterflies on these 2 cards are from the Altenew Swallowtail Butterfly die set. I only used 2 of the layers to create these butterflies. That is the plus to layering dies, you do not always have to use all of the layers so you can get many different looks. The bottom layer is cut from heavy vellum and the top layer I cut from watercolor paper and then sprayed it with Distress Stain Sprays.

For the background stamping we used 4 different types of ink. This class was all about seeing what happens with you spray Distress Stain and Distress Oxide sprays over the different types of end. Even though I have had & used the different types of ink many time over the years I have not played around with them to see how they react with sprays.

For these 2 I just used large sentiment dies to create sentiments and simply placed them on the card fronts. Super simple but the size and color of the sentiments give it a little something extra.

For these 2 I used the same leaf die from Altenew's Just Leaves die set but changed up the look and feel of them by using different colors of cardstock to cut them. 

In addition to the stamping and the distress sprays we also used stencils with Ranger's Texture Paste and gave the panels more texture and dimension. This is a technique that I really need to use more often.

For these last 2 cards I did more die cutting, this time using the Sizzix Wildflower Stems #2 by Tim Holtz. I love the look of silhouettes and these dies are the perfect thing to accomplish that look. 

Do you create mixed media or are you like me and have a love-hate relationship with this medium?