Altenew Mega Greetings 2 Cards

Hey, hi! I made some cards a couple of weeks ago for the Altenew shop and Inspiration Book and wanted to share them with you here. I used the Mega Greetings 2 stamps and dies, with the words “happy” and “you” as the focus.

I started by making a floral bouquet on Neenah Solar White cardstock with the Watercolor Wonders stamp set. I used all the pastel pinks, lilacs and greens to stamp the flowers and leaves. I love this stamp set because it’s such a perfectly imperfect layering stamp set that there is really no right or wrong way to stamp them. They do come with a guide, but you would never know if you actually mis-stamped. Just like real watercolor painting.

Once I had my card panel all stamped, including some ink splatters which I achieved by smooshing the ink pad onto a watercolor palette, picking up with a wet paint brush and flicking onto the paper, I positioned the “happy” die over the floral design allowing it to hang off the bottom edge. I die cut the word being careful to not lose any of the stray pieces.

I die cut another “happy” word from white fun foam and adhered it to the stamped die cut. Positioning the background part of the card panel onto a coordinating green mat and gluing it down, I then placed the die cut with the foam layer into the opening left behind by the die cut word. Once the word was in place and adhered I added back in the background pieces that were loose.

Finally, I stamped the word “birthday” from the Mega Greetings 2 stamp set, with embossing ink on grey cardstock and heat embossed with white embossing powder. I trimmed it into a narrow word strip and adhered it to the bottom of the die cut word. Some matching grey enamel dots enhance the grey word strip perfectly.

For my next two cards, I used the Mega “you” die and cut once to create two cards! That’s always a favorite technique to improve productivity from limited creative time.

I began by stamping a pale blue/green cardstock card panel with the Delicate Flower Bed background stamp set with Obsidian Pigment ink and heat setting with clear embossing powder. I used the B201 (Sea Glass) Artist Marker to add some very subtle color to the stamped images.

Then I positioned the Mega “you” die where I wanted it to be on the finished card and die cut once from the stamped and colored card panel and again from an A2 sized piece of black fun foam, again, being careful not to lose any of the bitty pieces from the center of the letters. I adhered a coordinating color of blue cardstock to a card base and trimmed down the stamped card front and the foam by 1/8″ on each side to let the mat edge show. I adhered the card panel to the card front and added a stamped, white heat embossed sentiment strip on darker grey cardstock with foam tape for added dimension.

For the second card, I used the positive piece of the die cut word, also with the black fun foam layer for extra dimension and popped it up on a piece of the same blue cardstock as the stamped cardstock.

For some added interest I lightly inked the card panel with Sea Glass ink using the Beach Towel Stripes stencil. I stamped “rock” from the Mega Greetings 2 stamp set with Obsidian Pigment ink and clear heat embossed it. I trimmed the stenciled card panel narrower on one side and paired it with a strip of black cardstock, then added a squiggle line of black pen.