I’ve been playing around with water color for a little less than a year. I like the look but have trouble with the messy aspect of it. In Altenew’s class, Watercoloring Basics and Beyond, the instructor discussed the importance of letting the paint mix and blend freely. The last lesson encouraged free hand watercoloring without using stamps. When I watercolor, I typically just color in a stamped image. Watercoloring without having the stamped image as a guide freaked me out. In the spirit of just trying this out and learning something new, I decided to go for it. The class is designed to showcase the Altenew Watercolor Pan set. I don’t have this watercolor set so I used ink from the Altenew Watercolor Brush Markers instead. These markers are vibrant with rich colors. Please read on for how I put together this card. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase through these links, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you your support.

Although cards are a 2-D art, I really try to add dimension to my cards. I typically achieve this through layering papers, die cuts and adding sequins. In the Altenew Academy class, One Layer Wonders, the instructor pushes the boundaries for how to achieve the look of dimension in only one layer. I took this challenge on and using the idea of drop shadows and lines to build a focal point throughout the image, I built a card using only one layer of paper. To be fair, I did do all the work on an A2 panel and then attached that panel to a card base. Please read on for how I was able to achieve dimension and depth using just one layer. 

Cards are essentially a 2-D medium. Adding texture without adding too much bulk is a papercrafter's dream. Altenew Academy class, A Touch of Texture helps in making this dream a reality. Within the class, the instructor discusses using background stamps, specialty paper or even scoring to achieve texture on a card. I was intrigued to try using both scoring and ink blending to achieve some different texture. Score lines are creases in a paper made by folding or using a bone folder. To see how I used just a bone folder, ink and paper to build texture on a card, please continue reading. Affiliate links are used within this post. If you choose to use these links to purchase products, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support. 

Altenew, in addition to its stamps, has a line of wonderful inks with matching watercolors and alcohol markers. Altenew sets up its inks into blending groups. By organizing the inks into blending groups this takes care of the guesswork of which inks would work well with other inks. Altenew alcohol artist markers work the same way. The artist markers are available in sets and all the colors within a set work together. In the Altenew academy class Creative Coloring the instructor uses Altenew alcohol artist markers to make some amazing backgrounds and images. I do not own the Altenew artist markers. For this card I’m using my Copic markers but following the techniques illustrated in the Altenew academy class on alcohol markers. For information on my entry into Copics, read a past blog post here. The biggest take away from the class was to practice, practice, practice blending. The first piece the instructor made was a rainbow blended background. I was really intrigued to try this out myself and it gave me an opportunity to use some of the Copic markers that I never use. Please keep reading to see how I made a rainbow background and turned it into a card. Affiliate links are used in this post. If you decide to purchase through these links I may receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Here it is....the final challenge of level 2. So far I have taken 20 Altenew Academy classes and made 37 cards. This has been a really great experience to improve my card presentation and to learn different techniques. For this challenge I had to make a home decor project using inspiration from some of the 20 classes I have taken. I decided to make some prints in the spirit of John Audubon’s nature prints. I had been planning on purchasing some Audubon original book plates but these are really expensive. The book plates have really simple images and have just a flower or birds with the species name in typeface. Altenew stamp sets have beautiful detailed images that I thought would work great for this project. Read on for how I put together these home decor pieces. If you have questions on the Altenew Educator Program, please let me know as I would be happy to talk about my experiences so far. I’ve included affiliate links in this post for the items I used to make these pieces. If you use these links to purchase the items, I may get a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support.

Heat embossing is such a cool technique and one way to add such a big impact with very little effort. In the Altenew Academy's class: Impressive Heat Embossing, the instructor demonstrated quite a few ways to up the embossing game. One of the techniques she showed was using different colors of heat embossing on one image. For today's card, I used this idea along with Altenew's Happy Days stamp set and die to make two cards. The Altenew Happy Days stamp set is a smaller set but has great sentiments for Anniversary and Wedding events. Please read along for how I put together these cards.