Video: How to Make a Floral Frame Background + Top 9 Favorite Cards of 2015

Hi, crafty friends! It's May here and I hope you are having a happy holiday season with your friends and family. Before I share my project for today, I would like to share my favorite cards I've made for Altenew in 2015.

My Top 9 Favorite Altenew Cards of 2015 

• Column 1: Celebrate, Elephant, Hello
• Column 2: Love potion, Happiness, Awesome
• Column 3: Orchid, Hello, I Love You

I would have loved to tell you the reason behind each of these cards, but I don't want to make this post longer than it is and take more of your time. If you'd like to take a closer look at any of these projects, please click the links above.

For today's card, I created a single layer card with my own floral frame. Even though I live in sunny California, I'm already yearning for spring. Actually I can't wait for summer to come so I can swim at the pool every day. That was the reason I pulled out some warm, bright colors for the card.

How to Make a Floral Frame Background Card

1. Stamp the sentiment from Oriental Orchid with watermark ink and heat emboss it with gold embossing powder. (It's good to draw some guide lines with a pencil before stamping.)
2. Stamp the outline images from the Beautiful Day with black ink.
3. Make sure you start stamping with larger images first and then fill in the gap with smaller images.
4. Color the images with Copic markers. (You can use any markers or colored pencils you may have.)
5. Add some tiny dots in the gap with grey markers.

Here is a video showing you how I created my card. You can watch it here or in HD on YouTube.

The Best Black Ink for Copic Coloring

FYI, I used the Hero Arts black ink for stamping in the video, then I used the heat tool to dry the inked images. But the colors bled when I started coloring the images with Copic markers. I didn't have any problem using Hero Arts black ink and Copic markets together before, but it didn't worked out this time. So I had to make a stamped floral frame again using Memento Tuxedo ink which I missed filming the process.

What's your favorite black ink for Copic coloring? Please share in the comment below. In the meantime, you can find some tips in the following sources I found: The best stamp pad for Copics and 11 Black ink comparison for stamping.

That's all I have for today! It's been a wonderful year designing for Altenew and being inspired by talented ladies on the design team. And I would like to thank everyone of you who has shared some amazing projects in the Altenew community: Instagram, Facebook, and Flickr. I'm looking forward to seeing more from you in 2016.

Thanks so much for stopping by today and wish you a Happy New Year!