Crafty Bo (Kimberly R)

Hello wonderful human! Today's card was a little bit of a struggle...I'm not gonna lie.  The next lesson for Level 1 of Altenew's Educator Certification Program was titled "Clean Simple Boutique Cards." I tried several designs from my collection and struggled because even though they looked ok, I felt that they didn't live up to a boutique style card.  I would add too much extra which meant it wasn't clean and simple.  Or, I just care for my design at all!  That's ok...we learn from mistakes right?  You see, I prefer lots of dimension such a multiple layers and shiny embellishments. But, I did not want to give up and knew magic will happen eventually.  Then, I finally made a one layer card that I felt was boutique worthy.  Here is what I came up with: Using the Scattered Tiles Builder Stencil Set from Altenew, I lightly layered the first layer with a light gray and then a little darker gray in some spots to give it a gradient effect.  I repeated t...

Hello! Today I decided to make a card using several products from Altenew and a new technique that I just learned from Altenew's class 'Irresistible Inking Techniques' as part of my continuing participation in their educator certification program.  After watching the lessons, I decided to use my ink pads in two ways:  using a brayer to apply ink to the cardstock and to edge the cardstock with the ink pad.  I have a brayer that I purchased eons ago for some other reason and never really used it so I was excited to learn this technique.  I will explain my process further below. For the background panel, I used low tack tape to tape an 8 1/2" x 11" smooth cardstock onto my work surface.  Next, I grabbed my lightest blue ink pad to press some ink alongside the cardstock onto my work surface.  I used a spray bottle to lightly spray some clean water onto the ink.  I then used my brayer and rolled it over the ink and made sure that the whole roller was inked....

Hello Crafty Friends! As the school year is coming close to ending, it's time to start working on those teacher cards!   For my eighth class participating in Altenew's Educator Certification Program, the class was "Easy Die Cutting Techniques".  I love making my own backgrounds and embossing with dies is right up my alley!  I used that technique for this card: I lined up letter dies and made sure they would cover the whole panel.  For this card, I started at letter 'a' and ended at letter 'n'.  I then taped all of them together using low tack tape.  I ran those through my die cutting machine but I followed the instructions for embossing instead of die cutting.  Embossing dies does not cut the paper but rather leaves the impression of the die into the paper. I trimmed the panel down to apply onto a black panel for a thin black border tying in the sentiment color. Next, I stamped the 'teacher' stamp, heat embossed that, and die cut it with the co...

Happy Camping Season! My husband and I had owned a travel camper and loved camping in the Spring and Fall in Pennsylvania.  We would start our campfire around dinner time to hang out watching the sun set and marvel at God's beauty.  That was the inspiration for this card and for Altenew's next class 'Seasonal Scene Building'. I wanted to create a framed camping scene, just like we would do for a loved picture to hang on the wall. To start on the background, I found a light purple cardstock and then ink blended a couple shades of purple ink to create the darkening sky.  I then did the same with the grass but using shades of green ink.  Onto the sky panel, I splattered some white ink to reflect stars and used a silver glitter pen to fill in some spots. While that panel was drying, I then die cut the camper and the tree from Altenew and glued them together. I then laid all the pieces together to see how I wanted them to be in the scene.  I trimmed the grass panel t...