ink blending

Playing with backgrounds

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Hi there. I’ve been playing with my Avery Elle ‘Brring On the Joy’ stamp and die set. I saw this on a YouTube channel, and thought how cute they looked. If you know me at all, I struggle with cute. I never know how to colour the little animals, how to arrange them – but I thought with penguins it would be simple…..a little bit of black, a little bit of white, some colour for the scarves and shoes….and there we have it.

Now, my main struggle was the background. I wanted to play with my Distress Oxides, and took the ‘Faded Jeans’ – the only oxide I have that is blue – and set to playing.

I first used normal card – too much blending, and the card started to break down. Without water, too. So – water-colour card. Actually, this is a little thinner than card, but thicker than paper.

I did one background by smooshing the ink pad onto my craft mat, added water, and then lay the water-colour card down. This was too random for me, and not enough coverage, so I took my blending tool and made it more even. That was pretty decent.

The I just took the ink pad, ran it over the water-colour card, wet it down, evened it out…a more solid background. Kinda liked that too.

The next one, I ink blended the traditional way, and even used a cloud stencil I had handy for some detail in the background…..You can tell which one that is. I just kept playing, and trying different techniques, and the only one I didn’t really like, and couldn’t do anything with – was when I didn’t use water-colour card or paper……. quite obvious, really! Oh – and I finished off with some water splattering……..got to really – rude not to!

I think I’ll be making some similar cards, as I like the sentiments, they are cute……and I liked playing with the oxide.

I shall be entering one of these cards into the following challenges:

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge – Christmas

The Merry Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge – anything goes Christmas

Christmas with the Cuties – Christmas animals

 

 

Colourful inspiration

Good evening all. For today’s card I have been playing with loads and loads of inks. Can you tell? I have been ink blending and creating Brusho backgrounds, and die cutting. Quite a bit of playing and fun I had.

For the base card, I used a piece of Crafters Companion water-colour card, and blended colours from Lawn Fawn. These inks are wonderful and blend very, very nicely. I will definitely use them again for this technique. I also did some water splashes to create some added interest to the background.

I actually tried to emulate the colours from the Daring Cardmakers challenge with the middle bottom image being of what I saw as sea and sun-setting sky.

You had to use three elements from these pictures, so I continued to create another ink-blending background, from which I cut small strips – to match the top middle picture, and laid those down in a criss-cross pattern just off to one side.

The third element I used were the flowers. Well, I couldn’t just put one or two on, could I? I started by creating a Brusho background with one of the blue colours, added some yellow, added some purple. I just kept adding until I liked the colours.

I then stamped the flowers from the Altenew ‘Adore You’ stamp set onto that background with Versafine Black Onyx and die cut them with the matching stamp set.

I glued everything down flat, and I used a glue I haven’t used before but bought at Doncaster Dome craft show this past weekend – Tombow multipurpose liquid glue. My goodness that stuff is strong, isn’t it? It may take over from my usual favourite glue from Creative Expressions – Cosmic Shimmer. I really like the Tombow….

I will be entering this card into the following challenges:

Daring Cardmakers – June Elemental challenge

Crazy 4 Challenges – at least three of something (strips, flowers)