Mixing up my Card Game - Hero Arts, Altenew, Concord and 9th

*This post contains affiliate links to Altenew

Hi guys!  Today I'm sharing what I'm hoping will become a regular feature on the blog.  I've been feeling a little stress over the volume of 'stuff' I have and the fact that I just don't get around to using it all.  I love it all, but sometimes you need a reason to get things out.

My solution?  A card challenge.  I took little strips of computer paper and wrote the names of all the companies I have stamps/dies/stencils from.  Doesn't matter if they are still in business or not, but I did limit it to companies where I have at least a handful of products to choose from.  I put them all in a plastic cup, and randomly picked three.

Here's what I ended up with:

So then I headed over to peruse my stash.  I ended up picking out a really old Hero Arts background (from the days where they used to collaborate with Basic Grey to create stamps that coordinated with their collections), an older stencil from Altenew (Floral Drape Stencil), and a retired C9 set that I planned to use for the sentiment.

This card did not go exactly according to plan.  

I really love the detail and delicacy in the lines from the background, and thought that stamping them in the spaces of the stencil would provide a really unique and graphic look.  The problem was, that some of the areas of the stencil were too small for the stamp to make an impression, and in the other areas I could get close enough to the edge of the stencil.  

I was about to give up in disgust, but then I saw that there was a lot of ink sitting on the stencil, and thought, let's see what happens if I spread this out.  So, I pulled out a blending brush and used that excess ink (and only that excess ink) to fill in the stencil.

I really liked the effect, it kind of tricks your eye to extend the lines of the stamp so that it doesn't look like it really didn't stamp well.

Once that was done, I trimmed my panel down and then used my heat gun to make sure that the ink was fully set because I knew I was going to heat emboss the sentiment.

The sentiment was embossed with WOW!  Metallic Gold Rich embossing powder.  To get a really pretty, puffy, raised look.  I ended up stamping, adding powder, and heating three times (using the MISTI of course).

This was fun, just in terms of the cardmaking itself and experimenting a bit, and also in terms of giving some love to items that hadn't been used in a while.  As I mentioned, I'm definitely planning to do this more often, and hoping others might take on the challenge too.  If you do, I'd love it if you shared your work with me!