Find Inspiration When You Feel Stuck – A Card Inspired By My Planner
The creative juices aren’t always free-flowing. Sometimes we need a jump start and the best way I’ve found to help myself is to look for inspiration around me. It can come from a photo, nature, your favorite movie, or in my case, a planner. The Color Your Day card class at Altenew Academy talks about just that. Finding inspiration in your every day life.
My Simplified Planner cover is gorgeous. I love a floral design. The colors are bright and cheerful yet soft. I wasn’t immediately inspired to make a card using the same colors. That is until I took the class. Now I feel like I’m always looking around to see what ideas I can find. I started by looking through my ink cubes to find colors that matched those in my planner design. Jackpot. I have them listed below.

Altenew Fresh Dye Inks
These colors just screamed floral to me so I knew I wanted an assortment of flowers and greenery on my card. Immediately, I went for my Zero Waste dies because you can get a lot of die cuts with one pass through your machine. I have the Zero Waste Wildflower Meadow die which was exclusive to the Secret Garden 2025 Retreat. Don’t have that die? No worries. You can grab any of the ones listed below and get a similar look.

Floral Zero-Waste Dies
I cut the Zero Waste die twice from Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb cardstock. I also cut once from a piece of Altenew Brushed Gold Metallic cardstock. Using the inks listed above, I blended color onto each die cut. You can see my full process over on my YouTube video linked below.
My A2 side folding card base is Altenew Citronella cardstock. I embossed a Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb panel with the Blooming Doily Charm embossing folder and then trimmed that to 5 1/4 inches by 4 inches.

The front sentiment is from a stamp that was also exclusive to the Secret Garden 2025 Retreat. It’s called Creative Labels but I’ve listed some alternative sets below in the same font style. I used the Altenew Antique Gold Crisp embossing powder to emboss the Grateful sentiment onto a white cardstock scrap. For dimension, I used the sentiment die to cut three additional layers from white cardstock scraps and glued those behind the embossed layer. The sentiment on the inside is from the Sentiment Strips 2 stamp set. There are three sentiment strip stamp sets in total and I highly suggest grabbing all three as a bundle.
Sentiment Stamps
I wanted a little bit of gold splatter so I used the Tim Holtz Distress Spritz in Fossilized Amber. I use this stuff so much just as splatter. It has a ton of shine and it’s just a perfect golden color. Then I added additional shine using my Trinity Stamps Gold Coin Embellishment Mix.

Again, if you want to see how I pulled this card together, check out my video below. Thanks for stopping by today. Now go get crafty!
Products Used:
- Altenew Fresh Dye Inks
- Zero Waste Wildflower Meadow Die – Altenew (alternatives listed below)
- Antique Gold Crisp Embossing Powder – Altenew
- Blooming Doily Charm Embossing Folder – Altenew
- Creative Labels Stamp Set – Altenew (alternatives listed below)
- Sentiment Strips 2 – Altenew
- Citronella Cardstock – Altenew
- Brushed Gold Metallic Cardstock – Altenew
- Fossilized Amber Distress Spritz – Tim Holtz
- Gold Coin Embellishment Mix – Trinity Stamps
- Versafine Onyx Black Ink
- Versamark Watermark Ink
Supplies Used:
- Magnetic Glass Craft Mat 18 x 24 inches
- Neenah Classic Crest Solar White 80lb
- Tim Holtz Paper Trimmer
- Misti Precision Stamping Tool
- Misti Sticky Mat
- Altenew Crafter’s Essential Scoring Board
- Teflon Bone Folder
- Spellbinders Platinum SIX Die Cutting Machine
- Concord & 9th Medium Blending Brushes
- Simon Says Stamp Detail Round Blending Brushes
- Waffle Flower Grip Mat 6.5 x 8.5 inches
- Art Glitter Glue
- Gina K Fine Glue Tip Bottle
- Spellbinders Best Ever Craft Tape
- Altenew Perfect Picker Tool
- WOW heat tool
- Simon Says Stamp Foam Adhesive Squares

I was nnot clear about what Altenew’s zero waste dies but now I understand. Really lovely photographs with the loos eflowers and embellishments.
Thanks Deborah! I have several of the zero waste dies and I love them. :)
You always make the prettiest cards, Jennifer! Love the inspiration point too!