Love...

Valentine's Day will soon be here and love is definitely in the air!  I finished up an Altenew Academy class a bit ago and finally got time to make my card for the Altenew Educator Certification Program.  The class is called Easy Die Cutting Techniques.  This class contained some ideas I had seen before but tons of new ones that I'm going to have to try out soon.  For my project I combined two different lessons.  Embossing with dies and inlaid die cutting.  I really love the look of both techniques.

The first thing I did was to cut a piece of Neenah 110lb white cardstock down to 4 1/4" x 5 1/2".  Then I picked out the die I wanted to use for embossing.  I adore the Altenew Layered Cover dies so I chose to use Layered Floral Cover die A.  I actually played around with my cutting machine until I found just the right sandwich.  I was aiming for a lightly embossed look.  It only took a couple trys until I found it!

Then I lighlty sprayed the entire panel with a mixture of water and Perfect Pearls to get a shimmering effect.  Once it was dry, I cut out the word love with the Mega Love die.  I love all of the mega word dies and think I own most of them!  I cut the word out three more times out of the 110lb Neenah cardstock.  I went ahead and glued the three plain layers together and set it aside.  

Next I took my embossed love word and got inky!  I used all four ink colors in the Tea Party mini cube set.  I applied the ink using some fabulous blending brushes I recently purchased.  I started with Pink Pearl on the E then worked my way towards the L, switching colors as I went.  Once I got the blend I wanted I squished my Versamark ink pad along the bottom of the word.  I then sprinkled silver embossing powder over it, shook off the excess and melted it with my heat tool.  Now, this is gorgeous but I wanted to step it up a notch.  I squished Versamark over the entire word.  Then I sprinkled on clear Ultra Thick Embossing powder and melted it.  I felt it needed more so I repeated the steps.  Once it cooled down I glued it on top of the other layers I already glued together.  

Back to the card panel.  I trimmed off just the smallest bit from all four edges of the panel.  I then adhered it to a dark grey card base.  I laid the love die cuts back into the panel so I could glue in the white filler pieces.  Once they were attached, I added glue to the love die cuts and put them back in place.

I felt the card needed a little bit more.  I played around with adding the "you" sentiment from Mega Greetings 3 set but I wasn't loving it.  So, I pulled out some sparkling clear sequins in assorted sizes and created a sort of waterfall effect on the card.  I'm extremely pleased with how it turned out!

Check out all the shimmer and dimension!

And here is a side view so you can see those layered love die cuts.

And just one more photo.

I hope you have enjoyed today's project!

~Kristina