Altenew Educator Programme – All About Layering 1

As I sit here tonight I can bearly sit still on my chair. This is my very first formal attempt at the Layering 1 class for feedback and progress in the AECP. It has taken me a few months to get started, but here I go.

The layering courses show both how to layer the beautiful images easily, but they also give tips and tricks on different ways to showcase the flowers. Layering 1 inspired me to go out of my comfort zone and not do a simple card, but to do a mixed media tag. Challenge accepted.

To start, I took a tag that I had already stenciled with puffy paint and a borrowed postmark stencil. I don’t know what it is called. To flatten the image and tone down the colour to make a flat background, I painted a few layers of white gesso over it.

Next, I stamped the beautiful Painted Poppy stamp onto heavy plain card stock using my Altenew inks and Versamark black. I fussy cut the flowers and started to play around on where I wanted them on the tag. To create the second layer of the flower on the inside, I used the same red ink but because it is stamped multiple times it is subtly darker.

To have something to stand on and not just be floating, I used some brown washi tape to create a “ground”, and then stuck my flowers down, making sure to have some in the background.

I glued everything down onto my tag using Heavy Gel multi-medium and also sealed the top layers – I find this useful because sure everything stays where you want it and you don’t get corners flapping up unless you specifically want them to. I also used a touch of the same red and green inks to lightly dabbed and smushed to give some background colour.

Then I used a sticker book to create my sentiment – I chose to reference Poppy Day and used the sentiment “Remember, 11, 11, 11” in honour of 100 years since Armistice Day. The sentiment seemed to flat a bit, so I drew around it with a Stabilo Marks-all pencil and used a wet paintbrush to smudge the edges.

Lastly, I used my very favourite products ever, Glass Bead Gel (thanks Dad for my pot) to give the centre of the flowers and the ground a bit of bling. What is a tag with no bling? 🙂

I also punched the tag hole at the top and used some seam binding I dyed with the red and green to finish the top.

Here is my final tag.

I look forward to any feedback and hope to continue my journey of making beautiful things as I learn.

Thank you for popping in, and I hope you are all having a good 2020 so far.