Hello, friends! Welcome to Day 2 of our Crafty Friends Blog Hop!

When most of us think of our crafty friends, I’m sure we think of people we met through crafting, who later became our real friends. I definitely have many of those, and they are all friendships I am grateful for!

But does it work the other way? For me, the answer is YES!

Meet Ashlea, a girl I chatted with quite a few years ago in a parking lot on my way to a friend’s birthday dinner. She commented on my interesting purse (it looked like a milk carton), and I think we had this mutual moment where we thought the other one was cool. But adults don’t make friends in parking lots, so we continued on our separate ways. That is until we realized we were headed to the same event! It was a good thing too because we were able to continue chatting during dinner and a true friendship started.

(Apparently, most of the photos I have on my phone are from costume events, lol!!)

After explaining card making to her many times (and her not seeming all that interested), she finally started to get how awesome it was. At least, she started understanding how cool I thought it was, and maybe that was good enough?

When she told me she started buying a few stamps and ink pads, I did a happy dance! Literally. Then I offered to give her all of my old stuff that I told myself I would sell but never got around to it. She happily accepted, and before I knew it she was cranking out AMAZING cards, and buying oodles of crafty stuff to support her new hobby. This girl learned everything she needed to know about the paper crafting world in what seemed like a matter of months. It took me years to do the same!

I am so proud of how quickly she made a name for herself, and take a teeny bit of credit for helping get her started. 🙂 Now that she is in the crafty biz herself, I can count on her to hang out with me at fun crafty events like the opening of a new paper crafting store, and a consumer show in NY. (plus she is accompanying me to Creativation! Woohoo!)

For my project today, I decided to make a card inspired by one of the many amazing ones she has made using Altenew stamps:

(This card features our Hope Stamp and Die Set, and you can read her original post here)

I just love how she used one of the flower’s layers to create a background that doesn’t distract from the main focus, but rather enhances it. I used the same technique for my card:

I used one of our new holiday stamps, Peaceful Wreath, and stamped out a little sprig of holly using Grass Field and Shadow Creek ink for the leaves and Crimson and Velvet ink for the berries. I then cut it out using the coordinating die. While I had my dies out, I also cut out the word “peace” from black cardstock.

Then, I stamped out the sentiment “to you and yours” in Watermark Ink and heat embossed it with Pure White Crisp Embossing Powder. I trimmed down the strip and cut a little notch into either end to create a banner shape.

For my background, I stamped the solid layer for the leaves and berries with Firefly and Blush inks. I felt they were a little too pronounced, so I softened the look with a sheet of Translucent Vellum.

I adhered the elements together with a combination of foam tape and tape runner, making sure to secure the vellum with a bit of adhesive behind the cardstock pieces (so it doesn’t show through). To ground the card, I adhered a strip of patterned cardstock (Coming soon! Sneak peek alert! hehe) across the bottom edge, similar to Ashlea’s card.

If you want to see more of my crafty friend Ashlea’s projects, check out her blog and follow her on Instagram!

Do you have a friend who caught the crafting bug from you? If so, I’d love to hear about it in the comments! 🙂

SPECIAL OFFER:

FREE U.S. shipping with code CRAFTY18 or $5 OFF international shipping with code FRIENDS18 at checkout. Offer valid from 11/29/2018 at 12:01 am EST through 12/1/2018 at 11:59 pm EST. 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 12 awesome friends who are celebrating with us and they are offering the following prizes:

Be sure to leave comments by Sunday, December 9th, 2018 for a chance to win! 37 winners will be chosen at random from the comments left on all of the blogs listed below and will be announced on the Altenew Card Blog and Altenew Scrapbook Blog on December 15th, 2018.

Your first stop on the hop is the incredibly talented Vicky Papaioannou!

Blog Hop:

Altenew Scrapbook Blog

Vicky Papaioannou

Enza Gudor

Laurie Willison

Nicole Picadura

Ellen Hutson LLC

Lydia Evans

Olga Moss

Amy Tan

Therese Calvird

Galina Filippenko

Sveta Fotinia

Lisa Spangler

Anna Komenda

Scrapbook & Cards Today

Kymona Tracey

Vicki Boutin

Carissa Wiley

Agnieszka Malyszek

TaeEun Yoo

Sara Naumann

Hussena Calcuttawala

~SUPPLY LIST~

Peaceful Wreath Stamp Set
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Peaceful Wreath Die Set — Altenew
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Peaceful Wreath Stamp & Die Bundle —…
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Embossing Ink
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Pure White Crisp Embossing Powder
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Vellum Translucent Paper (25 sheets/set)
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Grass Field Crisp Dye Ink
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Shadow Creek Crisp Dye Ink
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Crimson Crisp Dye Ink
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Velvet Crisp Dye Ink
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Blush Crisp Dye Ink
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Firefly Crisp Dye Ink
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