From Home to Cardmaking: Finding Inspiration in Everyday Treasures

For my Altenew AECP Level 2 – Color Your Day class, I explored how to take inspiration from the world around me and translate it into cardmaking. Inspiration truly is everywhere, and for this project, I chose two very special pieces from my home.

The first is a beautiful Arabic-style bowl that my husband gifted me back when we were just “friends.” It has such an elegant design with rich colors that instantly caught my attention. The second is a stained-glass style lamp that we received as a wedding gift. Both pieces hold special memories, and together they became the perfect starting point for this project.

  

My Inspiration

The bowl’s blue tones immediately made me think of creating a flower in that same rich, striking shade. I also loved the play of white and orange accents in the design, which gave me ideas for my card backgrounds. The lamp, with its stained-glass look, inspired me to add light and highlights to my flowers through ink blending, so they would feel luminous.

 

My Creative Process

For the florals, I used the Bearded Iris Layering Dies along with Altenew Fresh Dye Inks. Since I wanted the flowers to be blue, I reached for the Lapis Lazuli Fresh Dye Ink set. I carefully ink blended both flowers, adding highlights based on a reference image I found online of real irises. This gave the petals more dimension and tied back beautifully to the stained-glass inspiration.

For the leaves, I worked with what I had on hand—the Forest Trail Fresh Dye Ink—which provided a nice natural green.

One of the most valuable lessons from Therese in this class was about the percentage of color distribution in a project. Keeping this in mind, I decided to create two different cards, each using one of the iris flowers but with very different approaches to the background.

Card 1 – White Neutrals

For my first card, I used the large iris flower as the focal point. Inspired by both the bowl and the lamp, I chose white as my neutral background, making it about 70% of the card design. The blue flower and green leaves each take up around 15%, creating a fresh, clean, and airy look.

Card 2 – Orange Glow

For my second card, I wanted something bolder. I took inspiration from the orange accents on the bowl and created an ink blended background. I blended in such a way that the center remained lighter, drawing the eye toward the flower, almost like a glowing stained-glass window. Here, the orange background makes up about 70% of the design, while the flower and leaves balance out the rest.

Final Thoughts

It’s amazing how the same floral die set can give such different results simply by changing the background color percentage. Both cards reflect my inspirations—the cherished bowl and lamp—but each tells a slightly different story. This class reminded me how meaningful it is to bring pieces of our lives and memories into our creative work.

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