AECP Elements of floral composition

Today’s post features a beautiful card I made for a close friend’s birthday featuring techniques I learned from the Elements of Floral Composition course I took for the Altenew Educator Certification Program (AECP). This class was taught by the wonderful Jaycee Gaspar and goes over card design from the various elements of art such as Color, Value, Line, Shape, Form, Texture, and Space.

I leveraged the following techniques to create my project:

• When using color I adopted the 60- 30-10 rule pertaining to the ratio of colors used in my design.
• I adapted techniques from the lesson on using line.
• I used tips shared in the lesson on shape to arrange all of the elements on my card front
• I leveraged negative space in my design to create a visually pleasing design.

For my design, I knew I wanted my images to be bold and graphic with a soft muted color palette. To start I grabbed my Beautiful Day stamp set and, using only the outline dies, I stamped two sets of flowers and leaves onto Copic Xpress It cardstock in Memento Tuxedo Black ink. I also stamped a couple of the smaller floral images.

Next I grabbed a black Copic Multiliner pen in size 0.1 and enhanced all of my black stamp outlines as demonstrated in the class. I used thicker lines anywhere on the images where there would be shadows, and I used striped lines where the petals on the larger flowers curled for visual interest. I also cross-hatched the centers of the smaller florals.

Once I completed all of my line work, I grabbed my Copic markers to add some color to my images. For my color palette, I went with the February 2024 Altenew Monthly Inspiration Challenge colors of pink, green and orange, and added them to my floral elements using the 60-30-10 ratio covered in the class. Sixty percent of my images were in shades of pink, 30 percent of the images were the green of the leaves, and the final 10 percent was the orange in the main flower centers and in the smaller flower petals. I kept my coloring very blocky, leaving a lot of white space, to keep with my graphic look.

Once my images were colored, I die-cut them using the accompanying Beautiful Day outline dies. Next, I grabbed my Fine Frames Cover Die and die-cut a small fine rectangle frame from black cardstock. Now it was time for arranging all of my elements and gluing them onto a white A2-sized cardbase.

Incorporating the lessons regarding the element of shape, I first glued my rectangle frame to the card front. Next, I arranged all of my flowers and leaves along the bottom left of the card panel in a triangular pattern. Once I was satisfied with the arrangement, I adhered my images with both thick and thin foam tape to create added dimension before die cutting a friend sentiment from the Blossoming Freesia Die Set. I kept the sentiment simple to ensure the design remained the focal point.

To finish everything off, I added a few black enamel dots in various sizes, also in a triangle shape. I am just so pleased with how this card turned out and I learned so much from this wonderful course.

Thanks for following along on my Altenew journey!