Hello friends!  I am so pleased to be participating in my first Altenew Educator Blog Hop!  I went through the certification program last year and loved every minute!  For this post, I wanted to focus on two favorite stamp sets that I purchased while I was a student in the program, Doodle Blooms and Inked Lotus. 

Using Stencils on Acrylic Gel Press Mixed Media Cards

I spent a day making 5 x 7\” acrylic gel press backgrounds in a variety of colors and using lots of Altenew stencils and stamps.  I love color and texture and wanted this \”daisy\” card to be bold and vibrant so I started with this gorgeous red panel.  With a brayer, I mixed pink, orange and brilliant red and applied to a plate that had some leftover yellow and green already on the press.  After the panel dried, I added  a layer using the Flowing Drops Stencil and then an additional layer of gold with the Narrow Brick Stencil.  You can see the lovely gold shimmer in the second photo.  

Die Cutting Floral Images from Acrylic Gel Press Monoprints

Using the Doodle Blooms Bundle, I stamped and die-cut a bunch of blooms from some of the other hand-crafted acrylic panels.  I think this is such a happy and cheerful stamp set.  I laid the die-cut flowers on the red panel and selected the blooms I liked best on the background and adhered with foam tape.  The stems are from the Craft-A-Flower Cosmos Kit.   The flower centers are enamel dots from the  Glacier Caves and New Day collections.  I finished off by adding a sentiment with a strip of my favorite Painted Grid Washi Tape.

The background from this next card is the top portion of the panel I used on the daisy card above. I die cut it with the largest Rounded Rectangle and then backed with foam for dimension.  The Inked Lotus was heat embossed and die cut from a coordinating monoprint panel for a tone-on-tone look and was adhered with foam tape.  The sentiment was die-cut from black cardstock using the Essential Sentiments Set.  

I made a second similar card, but this time the Inked Lotus  was die cut from a red/orange acrylic panel where I brayered a lot of turqouise ink over the Narrow Brick Stencil.  This is my favorite stencil to use on monoprints.  The background panel was brayered with Yellow, Olive and Turquoise.  After the paint dried, layers were added with the   Leaves and Berries Stencil (blue), Mega Bloom Stencil and finally the Narrow Brick Stencil was lightly inked in gold over the background panel.  I love the dimension you get by adding layer upon layer with stencils and stamps.    

For my last card, I changed things up and used softer colors:  Sky Blue, Blue Violent, Light Purple and Brilliant Purple over a press that had some leftover Olive and Turquoise.  I then brayered over the Mega Bloom Stencil with a light coat of gold.  You can see the shimmer better in the second photo.  I again used the  Doodle Blooms Stamp and Die Bundle to stamp and cut my elements from a variety of  gel press prints.  I finished with  Glacier Caves Enamel Dots for the centers.

Here is a photo of two of the backgrounds prior to card assembly.  You can really see how lovely the stenciled accents look on the panels.