New Addition to the Team/Launch of Altenew Academy

Hello and good morning!

We have EXCITING news to share with you today!

Please join me in welcoming Nicole Picadura to the Altenew team. Nicole will be Altenew’s Educational lead.

Nicole was born and raised in South Korea, and moved to the states in 2007 after marrying her husband. They currently live in Sacramento, California with their two furry babies. Nicole was first introduced to scrapbooking in 2007 and slowly moved on to cardmaking and stamping. Her main style is Clean and Simple, and she believes anyone can create beautiful cards without spending too much time and share the love of handmade, hand-stamped cards. She loves teaching classes and filming video tutorials to share her passion with fellow crafters.

You can connect with her on her Blog, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.

We are happy to announce the launch of Altenew’s own education platform, Altenew Academy.

Altenew Academy will host classes that will focus on how to creatively use Altenew products. Our classes we will guide you step by step to learn various techniques to improve your card making or scrap booking skills. Our first class is FREE, and you can register for it here.

 

 

A New Addition to the Team!

Hello and good morning!

We have an EXCITING news to share with you today! Starting from this moment, there will be a new face on the design team!

Please join me in welcoming the uber-talented Amy Gray!!

Amy (aka Aimes) is a self-confessed tea, toast and papercrafting addict living in Sheffield, England. She took a leap of faith in 2014 and embarked on a new career as the Editor of the UK magazines, Simply Cards & Papercraft and Creative Stamping. She considers herself extremely fortunate to be surrounded with papercrafting supplies both in and out of the office!

Amy found her passion for stamping and cardmaking after starting her blog, Crafting Confessions, in 2008. She has worked on various design teams and has her work frequently published in a range of papercrafting titles. Although she adores clean and graphic designs, she isn’t afraid to try various styles from time to time – so long as she’s having fun in the creative process, then she’s happy!

You can check out what Amy’s up to on her blog or instagram feed.

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Hey!

Amy Gray (aka Aimes) here in a bit of a starstruck daze and giddy moment of excitement with my first project as part of the Altenew Design Team! I’m absolutely delighted to be here and completely honoured to be asked to jump on board.

I figured that the best way to introduce myself was to whip up a card in Altenew style that says hello at the same time! So cue the fantastic Sohcahtoa set to give me my clean and graphic kick that I adore and the oh-so-versatile Halftone Hello Die to create a simple, happy, hello card. 🙂

The Halftone Hello Die co-ordinates perfectly Halftone Hello stamp set, but I wanted to show how the largest die from the set works alone as a bold sentiment too. I love finding that I can get more from my papercrafting goodies! I couldn’t resist coating the die-cut sentiment with sparkles using my Wink of Stella pen and a good dollop of Glossy Accents for added dimension. It’s so shiny and sparkly!

The Red Cosmos mini ink set made stamping this pattern a breeze as all the hard work of picking the various shades of ink is done for you. Saving the darker shades of ink for the smaller triangles ensures that the focus can remain on the sentiment. I also recommend alternating the orientation of the triangles to keep the pattern balanced.

After making this card, I’m thinking that I need to make more in different colours. As a bonus it’s a pretty flat design which makes it postage friendly so they’re perfect to pop in the post to my friends. I hope that my little card inspires you to do the same. 🙂

That’s all from me today, but thank you so much for checking out my first project and for Altenew for this amazing opportunity. Have a wonderful day!

August Challenge: From Places Abroad – United Kingdom

Hello!

We are back with a picture theme challenge! And this month, the inspiration is from the United Kingdom. As many of you may know,  the Altenew team was at CHA-UK last June. It was mostly work, but we did manage to see some places during our stay there.

The following picture is from a store-front of a bakery (presumably) taken during a late night exploration.

 

 

This may seem a bit unusual, but there are plenty of elements/colors in this picture to use as inspiration 🙂

The following card was inspired by the lacy decoration on the cake:

To create the decorative front, a flower stamp from the Striped Florals set was embossed repeatedly in white on clear vellum. The embossed piece was then trimmed with a pair of scissors, and wrapped around a Walnut cream card stock (Bazzill) which was cut to the size of the card front. The sentiment (Scribbled Flowers) was stamped on a piece of white card stock, a whole was punched at its end, and then threaded through a brown ribbon. Finally, the ribbon was wrapped around and tied into a small bow. The finished piece was then glued to a card base.

Play Along:

Make a card, a tag, a layout or any other project based on the inspiration photo above.  You may use either the colors, the composition, the elements, the texture or any combination to create your project.

Rules:

• Make a new project for each challenge and post it by 11:59 pm EDT September 10.
• Use at least one Altenew stamp
• Link back to Altenew August Challenge in your post
• When uploading your project, make sure to link to your entry post, not your entire blog
• You may enter as many times as you wish!

Prizes:

After the challenge closes, Four winners will be selected, and one random winner will be drawn. Each will receive a $30 store credit at www.altenew.com.  Winners will be announced within a week after the challenge closes.

We can not wait to see where this month’s inspiration takes you!

Stamp Focus: Watercolor Wonders

Good morning! Tasnim here, and today I will be focusing on the Watercolor Wonders set.

 

Inspiration: This set is based on a watercolor painting by a Japanese artist. Jen and I met the artist at a show and  were very impressed with his work.  You will be seeing more of his designs in the near future 😉

Ideas: This set can be used in many different ways, and the following three cards will show you three ways that I have used it.

In my first card, I used the base layers of the flowers alone without the layering images. I stamped the flowers with Coral Berry, and the leaves with Versafine Smokey Gray, and cut them leaving a white outline. For my card base, first I masked off 5/8″ on each edge, then stamped the Woodgrain background using the same gray ink. I splattered some gold colorshine, then arranged the flowers along the two edges. The sentiment is from Label Love.

My second card is a simple one layer card. Here I used Buttercream, Warm Sunshine and Paper Bag inks to stamp the flowers, and Frayed leaf to stamp the leaves. The sentiment was stamped, trimmed, and mounted with foam tape.

For my last card, I used the same technique that I had shared in this post earlier. It is a very easy technique, and it gives beautiful results. After I stamped (using distress ink), and water colored the base layer of the flowers, I first dried them using a heat gun before stamping the next layer. To finish the card, I stamped a sentiment from Sentiments & Quotes, and added some scattered dots of silver glitter.

I hope these examples will inspire you to create your own watercolor wonders!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Blog Hop Winners!

Good Morning!

Hope your weekend is off to a great tart! Last week’s release was a great success, and it is all thanks to you! Thank you very much  for your positive feedback and continued support!

As promised, we have three random winners, who will each receive a $50 gift certificate to the Altenew store, and they are:

Maureen Hayes

Darnell J Knauss

Andy Y

Congratulations winners! Please email us at winner@altenew.com with the subject line July 2015 blog hop winner and we will set you up with your prize.

Stamp Focus: Garden Grow

Hi all! It’s Deasy here. Today I am sharing my projects using Garden Grow. I LOVE this set! It’s so versatile, artsy and fun.

Here is my first project, I made tags with no outline technique. First, I stamped the images with soft color ink and colored them using COPIC markers. The sentiments are from Fresh Freesia with gold embossing powder.

 

For this card, I stamped the images from Garden Grow with soft pink Ink and colored them using Copic markers, I stamped repeatedly to make it look like a patterned paper. You can make your own variation of patterned paper using this set. The sentiment is from Many Thanks

 

For my last card, I as inspired by May’s card on the Altenew Blog Hop. I made a scene with masking techique and then colored them using COPIC markers. The sentiment is from Fresh Freesia with gold embossing powder.

 

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you like my cards and get inspired 🙂

July 2015 Blog Hop and Release!

Welcome and thank you so much for joining us! The time has finally come, all the new stamp sets are now available for purchase at the Altenew store. We revealed the sets earlier this morning, if you missed it, you may take a look at it here.

We are celebrating this release with today’s blog hop. The design team along with guest designer Laura Fadora have some fabulous inspiration in store for you! Let’s start the hop with a few cards from Jen and myself.

Stamps from the Golden Garden set were used to make this card. First, a cluster of outline imges were stamped in gray ink, then three 2-layer images were trimmed and adhered over the stamped cluster. The sentiment is from the Scribbled Flowers set, and it was stamped on gray card stock and mounted with foam tape.

Yesterday I showed you a tag that I made using the Garden Grow set. Here, I used some of the images to create a little scene for a Get Well card. The bench and the flowers were colored with Copic markers. I also added some details to the flower pots that are under the bench using a fine black pen. The sentiment is from the Doctors Rule set.

Flowers from the Wild Hibiscus set were embossed in gold on a white card base, and then colored with Copic markers.

I had a great time making this card! Using the stamps from the Watercolor Wonders set makes it so easy to paint watercolor flowers! All you need is some distress ink and a wet brush. To paint the flower, I first stamped the base layer in light pink, then applied water all over the inked surface, making sure to stay within the flower outline. Next I stamped the layering images in different colors, and used my brush to blend the colors. Super easy and fun! I used the same technique with the leaves. To finish the card, I stamped the sentiment from Many Thanks set, trimmed the watercolor paper to size, and mounted it on a white card base.

This technique was so easy and quick to do, that I went ahead and made a frame art:

Here, the giraffe silhouette from Baby Zoo was stamped in yellow, and fussy cut.   Leaves were then die cut using our Doodle Blooms Die set, in a sweet dot patterned cardstock.  A sentiment banner and little stars (both from Baby Zoo) finish off the card.

This card features our new Halftone Happy stamp set.  The other day we shared how you can use the halftone image to create an instant gradient.  Here, the outline image was colored in Copic Markers for a different look.  Everything was mounted onto a card base covered in a cute camera patterned paper, along with a 3-D mounted white triangle.

Here, the Fresh Freesia has been stamped then embossed with white embossing powder.  It was then watercolored using a cool technique!  First add a quick wash of color over the bloom and the leaves.  Then, after it has dried a bit, go back and add dots of more watercolor.  Such a unique look!  Since the card is so simple, lines were then scored around the outside edge of the card to frame everything.

No, you are not suffering from déjà vu…the last two cards are ones you have seen already during our sneak peek week- this post will be updated ASAP with new inspiration using these sets!  Here, the steak image from Raise the Steaks has been stamped repeatedly to create a background.  Next, it was stamped onto a separate piece of cardstock using the coordinating layers and adhered to the card with foam tape.  Lastly, a fun (and punny!) sentiment was embossed onto a strip of black cardstock to finish the card!

For our last card, the floral image from Layered Lily was stamped using our new ink palette.   We love how well the colors coordinate with each other!  The flower stem is from an older set of ours, Painted Poppy.  A sentiment, from the same set, was then stamped in the corner.  For a pop of color, the flower panel was adhered over a bright dot print paper!

It’s time to start hopping! Your next stop is Laura Bassen.

Altenew <– You are here
Laura Bassen
May Sukyong Park
Jocelyn Olson
Agnieszka Malyszek
Marika Rahtu
Yana Smakula
Anna Kossakovskaya
Melania Deasy

PRIZES

To celebrate this release, we are giving away we are giving away a $50 gift certificate to three lucky winners. The winners will be announced from comments left on this blog.

There is more! Each designer will choose a winner from comments left on their blog, and the prize will be a $30 gift certificate– so don’t forget to hop along and leave comments. You have until Friday July 31, 11:59pm EST to leave your comments.

You may enter up to two comments on each blog:

• Comment on the project, or the stamps.
• Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Instagram

The winners will be selected and announced on Saturday August 1.

Good luck and happy hopping!

July 2015 Release Full Reveal

Good morning!

As promised, here is a full reveal of the nine new stamp sets that will be available for purchase in an hour!

Make sure to come back in an hour and join us for a blog hop filled with inspiration!

Sneak Peek Day 4

Hello!

It is the last day of sneak peeks, and today we are showing peeks of the final two stamp sets.

This stamp set is all about gardening. It is a 6″ x 8″ set and has many images from potted plants, to gardening tools, to little critters that you find in a garden. The images are drawn in a sketchy style, and are fun to color! They are perfect for making tags, cards or for any other paper crafting project.

This set is based on a watercolor painting by a Japanese artist named Akira Mineeda. We met him at a recent exhibition, and were so impressed with his work, that we had to acquire a few of his paintings!

This is another large stamp set, and it has flower images of different sizes, along with leaf clusters and flowers buds. The number of layers of the flowers and leaves range from 1-4. Given the freestyle nature of watercolor, there is really no right or wrong way to stamp these images, hence the endless possibilities!

We will do a full reveal tomorrow shortly before the release. The release will be at 9:00 am EST, and will be accompanied with a blog hop.

See you tomorrow!

Sneak Peek Day 2

Hello!

It is day two of sneak peeks for our upcoming release! Yesterday Jen introduced to you two brand new stamp sets, and today I have two more sets to share.

This is a 6″ x 8″ set of beautiful brushstroke floral images. As you can see in the peek above, some of the designs are one-step images and some others are two-step images. The two-step images can also be used independently. We hope this set will help you create countless creative designs!

The guide on how to align the two-step stamps will be available on the back of the insert card when you purchase this set. Here is a simple card that I made using some of the two-step images:

This is another 6″ x 8″ set containing large floral images. The images have a unique sketched style making them perfect for use either as is or with some added color. This set also has a few sentiments celebrating all mothers.

Hope you liked today’s sneak peeks! Tomorrow Jen will be back with a few more. Stay tuned!