Altenew Educators’ "Secret Card Recipe" Blog Hop and Linky Party + Giveaway

My secret to get a lot of use of my supplies! Join me and the other Altenew Educators in today's Secret Card Recipe blog hop! You should have come from Nancy's blog on this hop, if not, please start at the very beginning at the Altenew Card Blog. There's loads of great inspiration to see!

When I sit down and craft I sometimes do not have a specific card for a specific person or event in mind.  That for me is a good occasion to take out any one stamp set to have a really good look at all the images and try and figure out new ways to use them.

To do this I usually stamp out all those individual images on to card sized pieces of scrap paper that I keep next to my work area. I might for example try and stamp out rows to make a border or background pattern or try out color combos. I then store the most promising "scrap cards" in the plastic pocket together with the stamp set to serve as instant inspiration the next time I take that set out.

 Often I try to stamp those smaller images into a wreath shape because I feel it's such a useful shape on a card. This is what I have done today.

I used the Majestic Bouquet stamp set for these cards. 

If you want some more inspiration using this beautiful set check out this post from the Majestic Bouquet release hop.

These three cards were all done in the same way, first I selected one of the smaller stamps from the stamp set; a little branch with three leaves for the green card, a tiny solid leaf cluster for the rainbow card and an ornate oak leaf for the orange card.

I started by stamping the leaf branch on to scrap paper to see if it could be fashioned into a wreath. Then I used a circle die of the approximate size I thought would work and traced it in pencil to test the size. Once I was happy with the sizing I lightly penciled in the circle onto card stock. Following the pencil line I stamped out the wreath and one of the layer stamps. I used Olive Crisp Dye Ink for the outline and Bamboo for the layer, once the ink was dry I erased the pencil line. To finish this card I stamped two sentiments from Breezy Bouquet in Obsidian Black pigment ink. I added a few embellishments found in my stash (no idea where those came from) and mounted to a green layer of card stock and then on to a 4 inch square card.

My second card is a rainbow which was a lot of fun to create!

The process is the same as above, only the small leaf cluster was stamped overlapping, it took a couple of tries to get it right but I like how it turned out. For the rainbow I used 14 (!) Crisp Inks. If anyone wants to know exactly which ones, I will gladly provide the list but in all honesty, if you want to recreate this card, just use whatever inks you have in your stash and make it work!

The sentiment was stamped in Obsidian Black Ink, the "welcome" is from the Welcome Home set and the "lovely" is from the older Halftime Hello set which is no longer available. Mounted on black card stock and then on to a 4 inch square card.

The final card (which I could have used for a Halloween card but I do not send any of those) was all stamped in orange using Fire Brick, Peach Perfect and Autumn Blaze. The Happy Birthday is from the Invisible Numbers set. Same 4 inch square card but with an orange backdrop.

That's the Majestic Bouquet set that you see in the background of the pic above, it's the largest stamp set that Altenew has ever made and it came out to celebrate their 8th anniversary last April!

So what do you think of my secret card recipe - which card do you prefer? Please leave a comment below and you might just win one of these great prizes from Altenew!

On this blog hop Altenew is offering $130 in total prizes; a $20 gift certificate to 3 lucky winners and a $15 gift certificate to 4 winners! For a chance to win, leave a comment on the Altenew Card Blog and/or each designer's blog post by October 30, 2022. Altenew will draw 5 random winners from the comments left on each blog hop stop and announce the winners on the Altenew Winners Page on October 31, 2022. 

There's more - join our party! We have included an Inklikz at the Altenew blog for you to enter your own beautiful, Altenew "Secret Card Recipe" creations. We will pick one of our favorite handmade creations from those who joined the linky party, and they will receive a $10 Altenew gift certificate!

Here is the list of all the blogs on this hop :

Altenew Card Blog

Laurie Patterson

Irene Mejia

Roteja Galvan

Virginia Lu

Pam Boedeker

Neha Aggarwal

Nancy Souza

Helen Kalb - you are here!

Rachael Shedeed 

Rosie Neustaedter

Nicki Baxley

Joylita D’Souza

Lana Taber

Bridget Casey

Nandini Karmarkar

Teri Duncan

Eva Bussom

April Leithner

Amy Hill

Jennifer Leonard

Sue Busada

Annemarie Caister

Natasha Davies

Anna Patricia Mahtani

Fiona Duff

Thanks for stopping by, have a look around before moving on to Rachael's blog!

Hugs,

Helen

Disclosure: Please note that I do not participate in any affiliate programs and do not receive any payment for producing this or any other blog post. I only post about products I love and provide product links purely for the convenience of my readers. The Majestic Bouquet set was provided to me by Altenew back in April, all other products used in this blog post were purchased by me personally.