Combining Textures and Layers on Garden Harmony Card

Hi, Altenew friends. Norine back with you today with a card to share that utilizes several products and techniques that result in an interesting finished design!

One of the recent Altenew releases included the Garden Harmony 3D Embossing Folder, and I've been dying to play with it since that time! I knew that was for sure the one product I wanted to use for my card today, and it was a bit of a process to arrive here. The background panel of this card went through several iterations before I settled on this one.

Ultimately, this card went like this:

I started with a card panel of watercolor cardstock and loosely splashed some shades of blue and green watercolor paints on it. I dried it with a heat tool which caused the color to dry back nice and light.

Next, I ran the dry watercolor panel through the die cutting machine with the Garden Harmony 3D Embossing Folder. It's a beautiful 3D embossed design, and a background of leafy leaves will never not work with a floral focus, in my opinion. Once dry embossed, I used the small ink blending tools to add a little deeper color in a few spots, using inks (Dusk and Moss) the same colors to blend as I'd used to paint with. A light hand is necessary when doing this in order not to add too much color and hit more than the high points on the textured surface.

Setting the background aside momentarily, I die cut a frame with the Crystal Frames Die Set from silver foil cardstock and several leaves and a bloom from the Nature Blossoms Stamp Set. I stamped the leaves and flower with both the layers of color and the outline image, using the lightest shades of the Red Sunset family of ink colors for the bloom and Fire Fly, Grass Field, and Shadow Creek from the Green Valley ink family for the leaves.

I stamped a sentiment from the Amazing You Stamp Set onto Vellum Translucent Paper and heat set with Antique Silver Crisp Embossing Powder.

To assemble the card:

I trimmed the embossed watercolor panel slightly smaller than A2 and adhered it to a folded card base. Then I arranged all of the layers of die-cuts and inked images (minus the sentiment strip) and used some Glad Press'n Seal to keep all the pieces in position while I added glue to their backs and transferred everything to the card front as one combined unit.

The last step was to add the vellum sentiment strip to the card front without having adhesive show. I used a strong liquid adhesive, touching small dots to the spots on either card edge where I wanted the vellum to attach and pressing firmly to spread the adhesive behind the vellum and make it more transparent.

I contemplated adding some paint splatters before calling it good, but questioned whether they might be too much of an already good thing. What do you think? Paint splatters on top of 3D texture, yay or nay?

Thank you so much for dropping by and have a wonderful day!

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