Fearless Cardmaking in Minutes Challenge

The verbal tics got to me a little more today, but I think I like the principles she's espousing and how she explains them.

TL; DR: It's a combination of three sets that Altenew almost certainly intended to work well together. I think some of their inspiration photos show some elements together, though not the ones I chose.

Mostly from a single set. You might have noticed/might recall that the thing that really drew me to my first Altenew virtual retreat was an art deco style set called Streamlined. The retreat kit had an embossing folder, background stamp set with sentiments, and a die set for the sentiments. The rest of the kit was not really so related, though there was a floral die set a couple instructors used with the deco items.

This spring, almost exactly a year later, Altenew released a slew of art deco themed sets, including a floral die set called Streamlined Sprig that coordinates much better (no real surprise) with the other Streamlined sets. The sentiment and its little shape thingy (I have no idea what to call that -- sentiment carrier maybe? -- were also released recently. The art deco hibiscus set may have been a few months ago. I had my eye on it, but until the other elements dropped, I resisted.

The hibiscus set itself is very different. It has the outline stamp, a stencil with simple coloring for the hibiscus base color, both base and shadowing for the stem and flower base (or whatever you call the green part between stem and flower), as well as a leaf and corner flourish (neither of which I used) and then layering stamps you use to add layers/details. So, both greens and the pale orange are blended/stenciled, the darker red and the yellow of the stamens (I think that's what that part of the flower is called) are layering stamps. It was a really neat way of layering.

I have had vague plans to figure out how all of this art deco stuff fit together and it was nice to have inspiration to not overthink it, just pull it out and do the obvious/simple thing. I literally followed the layering guide for the focal image and used the mini deco set for the sentiment. I've kind of known I was going to try tone-in-tone stamping with that background stamp since the retreat a year ago.

EtA: I put the background together with the focal image because they both came from art deco style sets. I am pretty chuffed to see, now that the card is completed, how the shape in the background echoes the shape of the blossom. It was total serendipity that I probably could not have planned if I tried.

First, I must admit that I already have a special bin where I put things that I am excited to use, so i didn't really have to select across my whole stash yesterday, or even all the things I've never used.

As for today's homework, I also tend to have a list in my craft journal of things I might want to try at some point. I'm also thinking of sort of "cheating" -- an embossing folder arrived yesterday with which I intend to try a technique from the Online Card Class...it would kind of be homework for both classes, right?

Did you try the bubble mailer shim trick with your die, linda?

Pinkfresh definitely has at least one video featuring it, but I've seen it elsewhere as well, so I'm sure you'll find it.

It's one of the two reasons I hoard bubble mailers (the other being the obvious "to mail things in").

YES!

Also startles small animals!