Hi it's Therese and I'm here for Altenew today and I'm going to be creating a
two tone background I'm using the gradient
stripes background stamp set and it
comes with quite a few really nice
sentiments as well in a really pretty
font but I'm going to start off with the background
so I like the idea of sort of changing
up your stamps and getting more out of
them and this is a really easy way to
create the two tone background I'm using
my Misti because it is such a large
stamp it's a lot more forgiving so it
means that I can actually stamp this out
a few times and know that I'm going to
stamp it in exactly the same spot so
what I've done here to create my two tone
background is just to do some simple
masking and I've got some 
post-it notes to do that with
and this just means that you can
get more out of your stamps I did
consider making every stripe a different
color maybe that's a video for the
future but I thought it would be really
pretty to do I've come back to the Grays
again I'm on a real gray kick at the
moment and I thought it would be really
pretty to have blue and gray together so
now I've just I didn't use the same
masks even though it probably wouldn't
have mattered the more you use a mask
the more chance there is especially when
the mask is just a paper mask like this
the more chance there is of ink seeping
in behind the mask and contaminating the
area that I've already stamped so I did
actually lash out and use a couple of
new post-it notes for the gray section
and I just took note of where the
stripes were that I had stamped out in
the blue and made sure that only chose
just to stamp the stripes that were
above that mark
I think the blue and the gray look
awesome together so as you can see I did
actually stamp both of these out twice
this is a fairly new stamp to me and I
did prep it with an eraser first but
it was just safer to come in a couple of
times and it is a large stamp so that's
where the Misti can help as well I
decided to add some of these stunning
cosmos flowers I want to keep this
fairly clean and simple
oh, and that was just a panel of
cardstock that wasn't actually my base of cardstock that I was working on either.
so I stamped out three of the flowers
with some of the permanent black ink
from Altenew and it is perfect to use
with your alcohol markers and I have got
the lids off to the side just showing
which markers I did use today I really
just wanted a shadow kind of look on
these petals of these flowers so I am
just using a really light hand here and
just using a flicking motion to add that
shading and of course they've got a nice
bright yellow center now this cosmos set
is actually a layering set so you could
easily stamp out the layers and it has
some layers for the center as well I
just chose not to use them and
in the last release Altenew actually added
some coordinating dies for this set so
that just makes life so much easier and
they're really simple to line up because
they have the open center so I and then
I could just run it through my little
mini blossom die-cutting machine. On this
die-cutting machine the base plate is
the one that you cut into and that is
the thicker plate it just kind of if you
think about it it makes sense because
the more you cut into something the more
it's likely to warp
so the thicker plate is less likely to
warp that's how I worked it out
alright so these
stems for their flowers I just want to
show you how I made sure that they were
going to die-cut well so I laid down my
dies with the cutting side down actually
laid my stamps my acrylic stamps on top
and then picked up the stamps with my
block and then remove the dies before I
stamp them out with some olive ink
easy-peasy except I didn't stamp one of
them very well but that didn't matter
because I knew that I wasn't going to
be using all of the images anyway and
then it's just a simple matter of lining
up the dies again over top and then
running in through my die-cutting
machine the sentiment today like I said
has some great it has some great
sentiments in the gradient stripes set
and I've got some pale gray cardstock
mmm not black pale gray cardstock and I
am going to white heat emboss on this
and initially when you add the embossing
powder it doesn't look really white but
look at it once you hit it with the heat
tool and you see that powder melting it
goes that nice bright white it's
a really nice embossing powder this one
from Altenew it's kind of become my
go-to one now and I just did quickly cut
down my panel to fit the front of my
card and add the rest of my sentiment
with some permanent black ink
I have a top fold card and I'm adding
some adhesive to my gradient striped
panel and just gonna add that to the
front of my top fold card isn't that
pretty
you could almost just leave it like that
it was set of cards with stripes so cool
especially with the big letters you
could easily add a sentiment with some
nice you know the bold alphabet dies
from Altenew I think that would look
really fab as well
I did decide to pop up some of the
flowers and add some directly to the
card base I really like the dotted
adhesive for this because especially
with the thin stems you can run the
adhesive along there I just think that
the liquid glue is I'm a bit impatient
for those and the dotted adhesive is
only going to adhere to the cardstock
where you touch it the rest doesn't sort
of hang over the side so easy to use and
I did actually add a double layer of
foam tape behind one of the flowers
just to make it pop up a little bit more
off the card now to cut those it all
stems off I'll just flip the card over
and get a nice long straight pair of
scissors and that's my finished card for
today
I'll link everything at the blog and
you'll find a link to the blog post
below until next time have a great day
bye
