December 2022 Blossoming Creativity Blog Hop + Giveaway ($300 in Total Prizes!)

Hi there! I’m so excited to be continuing the celebration for this month’s Altenew Marvelous Monthly release with a second blog hop! You should have arrived here from Preeti Chandran, and your next stop is Teri Wilson. You can also start back at the beginning at the Altenew Blog in case you get lost! The Marvelous Monthly release for December 2022 featured so many beautiful new blooms in an assortment of styles, arrangements, and textures; I was so inspired for springtime with these gorgeous new sets! I used the new Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers and the Build A Garden: Rosa Gallica sets with two completely different mediums to create this pair of super springy, coral-bluebell-white-and-silver projects.

Here’s a peek at the Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers kit:

So many amazing products that work beautifully together, as well as individual components!

Here’s a peek at the Build A Garden: Rosa Gallica set (with the add-on die, too):

You can also purchase the Rosa Gallica set without the die HERE.

I kept both of my projects for today extremely light and airy, with a touch of mint and blue to contrast with the warmth of the coral flowers. I am totally loving this color combo! I try to keep my color combinations unique with each project that I create, and these were so fun to work outside of my normal pink zone.

I began this project by heat embossing one of the bouquets from Build A Garden: Rosa Gallica onto some white cardstock using white pearl embossing powder. I love how different this looks to the typical metallic or black stamped images; the white pearl embossing adds such a feeling of lightness to the project, almost like no-line coloring, but still with the helpful lines to keep your coloring process a little more simplified! I used the lightest markers from the Island Garden Altenew Artists Alcohol Markers set to color the flowers and foliage, using the Colorless Blender marker as the final marker to keep those highlights nice and bright and keep the overall feel of the finished product super pastel and pretty. I cut the finished image out with the coordinating die.

For the greeting, I used several elements from the Build A Garden: Rosa Gallica stamp set, embossing them in silver on white cardstock, then using the Add-On Die to die cut the “happy.” To help make the sentiment pieces stand out a bit from the background, I also die cut a tag from the Labels and Tags 2 die set.

The size of the finished bouquet immediately put me in mind of a mini-slimline card, so I used the Dotted Scales Debossing Cover Plate to add some subtle texture to a 3″x5.5″ panel (this fit perfectly, as this cover plate was meant to cover an entire A2 panel at 4.25″x5.5″) and mounted it to a full size mini-slimline card front (3.5″x6″) using foam tape. I mounted the colored bouquet to the textured, raised panel using some more foam tape, creating a double layer in spots, then filled in some of the bare areas with some white sprigs cut using the Itty Bitty Branches dies. I nestled the label and sentiment strips into the bouquet, allowing both the bouquet and the sentiment pieces to spill over the sides to create a truly dramatic and unique card front. The final touch was to add a few iridescent white gems for some sparkle.

My second card using the Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers features the same airy color palette with lots of white space and subtle color, this time created with stencils and ink blending! I was absolutely thrilled to discover that the stencils for the Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers work not only with the stamped images, but the 3D Embossed images, as well.

I began by die cutting the shape that coordinates with the 3D embossing folder included in the Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers kit. I then aligned the die cut with the embossing folder and ran it through my die cut machine. It created such a beautiful, ornate piece that I almost didn’t want to add color to it! It would look lovely just as a textured white piece!

I taped the die cut down to a piece of scrap paper with some washi tape, then added each layer of stencil over the top, keeping the stencils in place with pieces of washi tape. I used only four shades of ink for this image, preferring to keep the shading softer by doubling up on the same color of ink rather than creating intense shadows with a darker ink color. I added some silver metallic watercolor to the flower centers to keep things cool and artsy.

For the card base, I used white pearl embossing powder to emboss the other bouquet from the stamp set, adding subtle texture to the background. I also splattered some silver metallic watercolor to the background for a bit of added texture. I popped up the stenciled, 3D embossed panel with some foam tape. For the greeting pieces, I paired one of the greetings from the Craft Your Life Project Kit: Watercolor Flowers that I heat embossed in silver with a hot foiled “thanks,” foiled using the Sweet Sentiments Hot Foil and Coordinating Dies with some matte silver foil. I popped up both pieces with a double layer of foam tape to make them really stand out. Finally, I added a few more iridescent white gems for one last touch of sparkle!

Well, that’s all for these projects! Now for some fun giveaway information:

$300 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $100 gift certificate to 1 lucky winner and a $20 gift certificate to 10 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by December 25, 2022 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 10 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on December 27, 2022.

Here’s the full link list for the hop stops: