Hi my crafty peeps! I Wanted to share my first project assignment for the Altenew AECP program.  I created this piece on an A7 piece of Altenew Classic Crest Solar White 80lb cardstock. I love the contrast in this piece and was inspired by the thoughts of spring emerging from the shadows of winter.  This was my first time using layering stamps and here I combined both the Altenew "You Are Absolutely Fabulous" and "Watercolor Wonders" layering stamp sets.  This was also my first time using Altenew "Crisp Dye" inks and I am now in love with the richness and saturation of the colors!  I used some of my favourite techniques in this piece.  First of all, to get the depth of the piece, I used second generation stamping with the the permanent black ink. Then I made masks of the flowers and stamped the layers of leaves over them in the cool colors of the spectrum: Lagoon, Magenta, Cotton Candy and just a touch of Dark Chocolate. Then I began to build the foreground flowers, layering them in warm and hot colors of the spectrum:  Orange Cream, Peach Perfect, Warm Sunshine, Ruby Red.  I added just another touch of Dark Chocolate and pop of Deep Iris. On the largest of the three bright flowers, I actually stamped the outside rim of the first stamp layer with Warm Sunshine and the middle of the stamp layer with Peach Perfect then used a foam blender to blend them into each other for another level of dimension before stamping the rest of the layers on it. Then I stamped my sentiment in permanent black-best to do it now because you can't stamp on it once it's stuck to the card The petals in the mid-ground are second and first generation stamping with Lagoon.  Using double sided sticky foam to give height, I arranged the layers in a diagonal cascading pattern. I finished the piece with just a little glistening of Wink of Stella in some areas of the background and on the sentiment then finished the piece with a run of permanent black around the edges to contain the artwork (I love doing this to truly finish a piece).   I cannot wait to do more flower layering stamp projects!!  Please let me know what you think!  It was so much fun to bring my inner artist back out for this project.