Day to Play

It’s New Years Eve Day. It’s a holiday but COVID sequestration keeps us home with some open time.

The Christmas tree is still decorated. The wreath is lit in the window. Yet I am looking the other way. They can wait. I’m taking these two days to play.

While I’ve been making Christmas cards and tags my stack of new, unopened Altenew supplies has been piling up. They have been calling to me and I’ve been impatient to get them inky and warmed up on my die cut machine.

First was Craft-a-Flower Poppy. What spectacular flowers with no stamping at all! (I did ink some edges.) The cardstock is from the Red Cosmos Family. Some flowers are popped up with foam tape. Behind the flowers, cut in gold is the Mid Century Frame Die with the center circle of cardstock cut out of the background. In that depression I stuck some Gold String Washi Tape with a few tiny sequins. It was just enough to highlight the flowers without taking attention away from them.

The hugs sentiment is so appropriate now when we all miss hugging our friends and family.

I played with this arrangement for quite some time, mostly because I’d given myself no deadline and it was fun. This is the design that worked for me.

My mailbox had a nice fat package from Altenew yesterday. Just in time for my New Years play days!

New colors of ink pads are one of my greatest joys. This release has a blue and green combo that makes me happy. I’ve loved blue and green together for as long as I can remember. The blue and green plaid tartan wrap skirts and plaid “going steady” shirts. Our first apartment was totally blue and green. Even the first Christmas Tree skirt I made was blue and green appliqué. OK. I’ve proved my point . . .Natures Wonders and North Shore are my new favorite ink families.

It’s the designer’s cards in the new release hops that influence what I will buy. Laura Jane posted something very much like the card above. That is what made me click the purchase button on Blissful Blossoms Bundle. (I also love the flourishes). I used ribbon and made a different background. Using the large blending brush and the Natures Wonders inks, I made an ombre background. I placed the Woven Stencil over it and inked white through the stencil to created a faint design over the greens. The depth and texture that results is just beautiful. I intend this for a masculine card. I think it works with the color and not-s0-frilly flowers.

Vicky Papaioannou was my second enabler. She used the Ornamental Feature 3D Embossing Folder for her Blissful Blossoms card. I doesn’t show up in the photo. Next time I’ll do a very faint gray blend over the embossing.

It is the flourishes that distinguish Blissful Blossoms from other florals.

Yana Smakula introduced me to this technique of coloring in a solid dark background. I am obsessed with it and love to test it on new stamp sets. Next time I’d use a larger, single leaf.