So I made it through Academy 1 of the Altenew Educator Certification Program (AECP)! I am so excited to be sharing my first project as a member of the Academy 2 candidates featuring a project I made after completing the Beautiful Details class hosted by Marika Rahtu.
This course focused heavily on using different mediums to create beautiful detailed images for your cards and every inspiration project shared by Marika is breathtaking. For my project I am primarily relying on Lesson 6 of this course, which focused oncombing alcohol markers with colored pencils to really make your project shine.
To create this card I started with the beautiful Build a Flower Laelia Stamp and Die Set. I decided to combine no-line coloring with solid stamping using the various stamps provided in the set. To start, I lined up the floral outline image and stamped it in a soft lavender ink. I didn’t want to rely on die cutting with this project so I then stamped the same image onto masking paper to create a mask, which I later fussy cut out and adhered to the card. Once my mask was in place, I lined up my leaf stamps in my stamping platform and stamped them in the same lavendar ink. Now it was time to color.
The November 2023 Altenew Inspiration Challenge Colors features the colors Lilac, Violet, and Magenta so I took the inspiration colors for my Laelia and got to work. For the center portion of the flower I used Copic Markers in the blue violet series, primarily BV13, BV04, BV02, and BV01. I then blended these colors into the petals using the RV family, RV17, RV55, and RV52.
PRO TIP: When using Copic alcohol markers, don’t be afraid to step outside of natural blending families. You can create all sorts of new blends if you step outside a number series. I always swatch new color combos when I am starting on new projects.
When it came to my laelia stem and leaves, I knew I didn’t want to compete with the bold color palette already featured in the flower, so taking a tip from the course, I kept things neutral and used my warm grays for the laelia stem and leaves. Now it was time to enhance my card with a little color pencil.
When it comes to pencils I do use both Prismacolor and Faber Castell Polychromos pencils. Prismacolor is a wax based pencil and lays down lovely color, but the pencil nibs are soft are more challenging for detail work. The Polychromos, on the other hand, are oil based and have a firmer tip. For this card I predominately used Polychromos pencils with the exception of my white PC 938 Prismacolor.
PRO TIP: If you do a lot of Copic coloring, the one must-have pencil is the PC 938 Prismacolor, White. This pencil easily goes over Copic coloring and allows you to add soft white highlights to enhance any project.
When selecting pencils for my feature flower I looked through my sets for the darkest colors mirroring my violet and magenta palette. I then used these pencils to darken the shadows of the petals and create more definition. Once done with the darker shades, I then used my white pencil to soften the areas where my color blends were sharper and to add highlights to the petals.
Once my coloring was complete I needed to add a little more interest to my background so I employed another tip from the course by added some spatter. To add the spatter, I reapplied my masking paper over my flower, and then grabbed my Altenew Watercolor 36 Pan Set and a Number 6 round brush . I selected the dark gray color Moon Rock and gently tapped small spatter onto the card.
To finish things off I added a double mat to my card panel in lavendar and a dark warm gray and grabbed an embossed sentiment from my stash. I had a quite a few extra sentiments from the One Go Birthday Greetings stamp and die set that was featured in my Academy 1 final project. All card crafters know to save extra sentiments.
Thank you so much for checking out my card!
BEAUTIFUL!!!!