Seasonal Scene Building - AECP Journey

Today's card is my next assignment on my AECP journey and it's all about scene building. This is definitely one of the areas that I struggle and have a hard time with. I absolutely love seeing all the gorgeous and absolutely adorable scene cards made by all the talented cardmakers out there on Instagram and I envy them so...I just can never seem to pull them off. But then this class came along and it is taught by the very talented Nichol Spohr. She is one of the many amazing cardmakers out there that I am always in complete awe of! She always makes the most incredible scene cards, so I was pretty excited to learn from her!

ETA...I have lost some photos when I changed blog providers, so I don't have many of some posts.

I got out Altenew's Garden Grow stamp set for this card...it's perfect for making a beautiful garden scene, Copic markers, some ink and a brick wall stencil and went to work. I used my Misti stamp positionner for this as it is so easy to stamp multiple images at once and have them exactly where you want them. And also, if at first your images don't come out perfect the first time, you can re-ink them and stamp again and they will still be in the exact same place. There is no need for second guessing and risk having double stamped images and thus having to start over...trust me, I've learned from this in the past. You don't need to use a Misti for this, as there are many other products out there on the market, but this is what I have and I couldn't imagine life without one now.

I learned a great tip from Nichol, one of many, but to place all your stamps laid out on your paper in the order that you'd like them to create your scene and then pick them up with your stamp positioner. I would have normally in the past stamped them out one by one, so this is a big help, as you can visually see how you want them and if it looks okay. Since this was going to be a masked scene, I put the images that I wanted in the forefront of my scene to be stamped first and with the table in this case, stamped last as it would be somewhat in the background.

So I proceeded to stamp out all the images and stamped them a second time on masking paper and cut them out. I used a very thin sticky paper that is made specifically for masking images but you could also use post it notes for this. When cutting out your images on the masking paper, you want to make sure to cut right on the lines of the image or just right inside them, so as to avoid having gaps between your stamped images on your paper. I continued stamping and masking off my images until I had my scene just as I wanted, with the small pot stamped before the large pot, as it would be in front of it. Just be sure to hold on to your stamped images on the masking paper for future use, as they will still be sticky and perfectly good to use multiple times. I stuck them to the back of the stamp set so I'd be sure to find them for the next time. Once I had them all stamped out, I left all the masks on as I wanted to do a bit of stenciling behind the image to give a bit of interest to it all.

I got out a brick wall stencil and positioned it over my scene using my post it tape. I used the brick wall stencil to make it appear as if my gardening table and plants were up against a wall. I used Misty Morning ink from Altenew for this and concentrated more towards the center of the image and fading out towards the top, bottom and sides of it, without going too heavy with my application, so as not to distract from the central image. Once I was happy with how it looked I removed the stencil and all the masks. I love the faded look of it!

Next came the colouring. I hadn't used my Copic markers for quite sometime...maybe a few years, so I wasn't doing any fancy colouring here, as I still need to perfect and become more confident with my colouring skills. I was a bit rusty with it and yes, my shading at the base of legs of the table is a bit off too, but I was happy with the result and really loved how this all came together. Always make sure when using Copic markers or any alcohol marker, that you are using an ink that is suitable for them and won't bleed as you colour your images. I used Memento Tuxedo Black ink, as it a Copic marker friendly ink. I took the sentiment from the Regal Beauty stamp set and thought it went perfectly on the card. Once I was done, I adhered a piece of fun foam to it to pop it up a bit from my card base to give it a bit of dimension, as it is a more simple and leans towards being a one layer. In the end I decided to add the little butterfly, gave her a bit a sparkle using my Wink of Stella shimmer pen and also only glued her down one side to make it appear as she is flying off the page. And yes, the butterfly is a girl.

All in all I was pretty happy with how it came out! I definitely need to work on my colouring skills and this is also one of the classes that I will watch over and over and over again, to really work on my scene building skills. But that's one of the good things about the Altenew classes....once you sign up for them once, you have them forever. So you are able to go back time and time again to watch them and learn all you can from them. There are also so many possibilities with this stamp set, I am sure I will be making plenty more with it!

 

I learned so much from this class. A scene doesn't always have to be your typical scene that you would normally think of and that I always associated with. I think that was where I always had trouble with them before. So I definitely stepped out of my comfort zone for this one and I am grateful that I did. It ended up resulting in a beautiful card!

I hope you enjoyed my card for today and I'd love to hear what you think down below in the comments. Do you enjoy making scene cards or do you find them initmidating? Thank you so very much for taking the time to stop by today and I hope you all have a wonderful day and take some time out to be crafty!

Supplies Used:

• Altenew Garden Grow stamp set
• Altenew Regal Beauty stamp set
• Altenew Misty Morning mini ink pad
• My Favorite Things Small Brick Wall stencil
• Memento Tuxedo Black ink
• Taylored Expressions Blending Brush
• Wink of Stella Clear Glitter Brush pen
• Copic Alcohol Markers: C3, C5, C7, E13, E15, E19, E71, E74, E79, BG13, BG15, BG18, BG72, BG75, BG78, BV11, BV13, BV17, YG17 and YG67.
• Copic Multiliner 0.3
• Inkadinkado Stamping Mask Paper
• Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb cardstock
• random white card base
• fun foam
• Tombow Mono liquid glue
• double sided tape