Good morning! Today marks the start of a new month, and with it, a new Build A Flower release from Altenew! May’s bloom is the Build A Flower: Indian Lotus, and it’s a large, gorgeous bloom, with both an outline as well as solid layering stamps for a multitude of possibilities! You should have arrived here from Amanda Baldwin, and your next stop is Carol Hintermeier, but you can always start back at the Altenew Card Blog to start at the beginning. I have a vivid, but still ethereal project for you today, colored with Altenew’s Artist’s Alcohol Markers, so let’s get started with the details!
When I think of water lilies, I always think of Monet, with the rich, vivid colors bleeding into each other and allowing the mind to create the shapes and details in the subjects of the painting. I am too much of a literalist to do a truly Monet-style card, but I love the idea of the colors blending into each other to create a seamless look.
I began by stamping the outline image from Build A Flower: Indian Lotus using Permanent Black ink onto some plain white cardstock. I then used the beautiful blue-violet shades from the Water Garden Artist Markers set (what an utterly appropriate name, right?) to add lots of vivid color to the blooms, while the lilypads were colored with the green markers from the Sunshine Valley marker set. I also used the Colorless Blender marker to add some highlights along the edges of the petals to help deepen the contrast between the dark shaded areas and the lighter tips of the petals. I die cut the colored images with the coordinating dies (included in the Build A Flower: Indian Lotus set).
For the card base, I wanted to recreate that beautiful saturation of color in Monet’s paintings with ink blending, giving an illusion of water and a purple sky behind it, mimicking the colors in the water lilies themselves. I used a combination of Dusk, Desert Night, and Hydrangea inks with the Altenew Blending Brushes to do some blending on a white card base, saturating the deep blue down towards the bottom of the card base, then fading into medium blue, and finally fading away into the purple, leaving the top edge of the card white. Did you know that Altenew’s inks react with water? (it’s because they’re water based!) To further the “water” aesthetic which I was trying to achieve, I sprinkled a few droplets of water on the blended card front, then quickly dabbed them up with a clean paper towel to create some water droplets and add texture to the background.
Once my card base had dried completely, I adhered the colored flowers to the card front using Instant Dimension foam adhesive. I stamped a greeting from Build A Flower: Indian Lotus, then trimmed it down and added it to my card front. Finally, I added a few iridescent gems, which I think help enhance the ethereal nature of the card. They remind me of bubbles!
Well, that’s all for my project today. Now, for some fun giveaway information!
$200 in total prizes! To celebrate this release, Altenew is giving away a $50 gift certificate to 2 lucky winners and a $20 gift certificate to 5 winners! Please leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer’s blog post on the blog hop list below by 05/06/2021 for a chance to win. Altenew will draw 7 random winners from the comments left on each stop of this blog hop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on 05/08/2021.
Your next stop on the hop is Carol Hintermeier. If you enjoy this monthly floral series from Altenew, you can always subscribe to the Build A Flower series to receive the sets each month at a discounted rate! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and have a marvelous day!
