Quill and Punch Works: April 2018

Hello everyone,
I am so excited to be joining Altenew today for their Fourth Anniversary Blog Hop. You should be here from the awesome, Sara Naumann's blog. If you are starting the hop from my blog, then no worries. I do have the full blog hop list at the end of my post.

I have been following Altenew right since the time they started their venture back in April 2014, and have been, and still am a huge fan of all their products, especially their unique and one-of-a-kind layering floral stamps, dies, and inks. Altenew is, undoubtedly, my most favourite stamp company ever and I always look forward to seeing what they bring in each month in their releases. I am so happy and excited to be a part of today's hop and have a Home Decor project to share I made using supplies from Altenew.

To create my project, I first started with a 10" X 10" MDF Shadow Box from Papericious. I primed the entire Shadow Box using White Gesso and Natural White Chalk Paint, again from Papericious and let it completely dry. Next, I used the French Blue Chalk Paint to create some watercolor stripes on my shadow box. I used strips of masking tape while painting in between the stripes, so that the paints wouldn't seep.

I wanted to create a framed border, and so I stamped the entire border of the Shadow box using various leaves and berries from the Altenew Golden Garden set using Black Archival ink, and I lightly coloured in the berries using the same blue chalk paint. I did this for all four sides of my shadow box.

It was now time to create focal of my project. I used my all time favourite Altenew Build-A-Flower: Rose stamp and die set to stamp and die-cut the two pink roses. This stamp set has six layers for the rose, and it's always a challenge to get all the layers correct, and that's what fascinates me the most about this set! Even though it's challenging to get all the layers aligned correctly, the end result is totally worth it and has a wow factor! I used the Cherry Blossom and Rose Petal inks from Altenew to stamp the roses.

The small white flower bunches and green leaves are also from the Altenew BAF Rose set. I stamped the leaves using Green Meadow inks from Altenew, and then used the coordinating die to die-cut them.

I am a big fan of Altenew's meaningful sentiment sets, and this particular sentiment from the Sentiments & Quotes set is an all time fave of mine! I stamped it using clear embossing ink on black cardstock, and heat-embossed it using Super Fine Detail White embossing powder. The big rose bud on the top is from the Remember This stamp set. I stamped it using black dye ink, fussy-cut it and then coloured it using Zig markers.

Those of you who have been following my work for a long time would know that I love adding a lot of details to my projects. For this project too, I loved adding foliage from different stamp and dies from Altenew. I used the branch die from the Create-A-Wreath die set to die-cut the small branches with berries. I coloured them using dye inks. I also added few little flowers in pink from the Vintage Flowers set by Altenew. (Fun fact: The Vintage Flowers set was the first stamp set that I invested in from Altenew instead of the their highly popular Vintage Roses set. I didn't have a stamp positioning tool back then, and felt the Vintage Flowers set would be easier for me to tackle, but I was of course wrong! The flowers in this set took quite a bit of practice to master, but I think the end results are totally worth it.)

And here's a look at the design again! I wanted to create something different for this special occasion and am quite happy with the way this turned out. What do you think?

Would you like to see more such home decor projects from me or do you find my cards more inspiring? I'd love to hear what you think :)

Special Offer:

Altenew is having some special offers to celebrate their fourth anniversary! Get FREE U.S. shipping with code HAPPY4TH or $5 OFF international shipping with code ANNIV at checkout. Offer valid from April 3rd until April 8th at 11:59 pm EDT. Not valid on prior purchases. Cannot be combined with other promo codes.

Prizes:

Altenew is giving away a $50 gift certificate to 5 lucky winners and one Altenew Academy class to 5 lucky winners. There are also 13 awesome companies/crafty friends who are celebrating with us, and they are offering the following prizes: