15 November 2020

AECP 1 - Easy Ink Blending Techniques

 Hello, crafty peeps and welcome back to my blog. Today's post is my ninth submission to the AECP and is all about ink blending. Whether you have dye inks, Distress Inks or Distress Oxide Inks, this class guides you through the basic techniques you will need for easy and effective ink blending.

My cards for this class use ink blending as a background, specifically a daytime and a night time sky. I thought it would be fun to make a pair of cards using the same stamp set, Neighborhood, changing the time of day with the background. 

Card One
I've moved house a few times and there's nothing better than a warm welcome from new neighbours. I thought it might be nice to create a welcome card and so I stamped the row of houses and road at the bottom of a 4.25" x 5 .5" card base.


I did some very simple colouring with my Copic markers - I didn't want to detract from the blended background by putting too much colour in the houses. I stamped another copy of the stamp onto some masking paper and masked off the houses to protect them from stray ink. The background was created with a blend of Distress Inks in Tumbled Glass, Chipped Sapphire and Faded Jeans, working from the lightest at the bottom, and changing and adding more colour towards the top. Rather than use a cloud stencil, I used a piece of scrunched up paper towel and some Hero Arts Hero Hues Unicorn White pigment ink to add some wispy clouds to the sky before stamping a sentiment from the Across The Pond stamp set with Jet Black ink. I almost always use my Misti stamping platform these days and it comes into its own so often in allowing accurate restamping to ensure a dark, crisp result.


Card Two
And, of course, once you've moved in and unpacked the wine glasses, there's the house warming party to look forward to, for which you'll need to create the invitations: 


I stamped the houses on a second card and masked them before blending a sky with Chipped Sapphire, Faded  Jeans, and Stormy Sky Distress Inks. Then I used some sprayed water (which I blotted with a paper towel) and splattered white gouache to put some stars in the sky. I used the 'You are invited' stamp from the Neighborhood stamp set and stamped with Versamark ink before heat embossing with Stampendous detail white embossing powder. And to finish the sentiment, I used 'Party time' from the Birthday Bash stamp set and heat embossed it with Brutus Monroe Sterling embossing powder.


I coloured the stamp the same way as before, then, as a bit of fun, I lit up the windows and put in the shadows of the partygoers. I also lit up the street lamp, but didn't realise that the water I sprayed earlier had lifted the surface of the paper, meaning that the ink from the marker immediately soaked into the paper and couldn't be blended out. Such a shame. 

I added a few stars and sequins to the night sky and made coordinating envelopes for both cards.


This class is definitely worth checking out as there's lots of inspiration to get you started with ink blending techniques that lend themselves to all sorts and styles of card.

Thank you for taking the time to read - do leave a comment to let me know you were here.

Until next time, stay safe and keep crafting.

Peri x

7 comments:

  1. Looks like you did it again Peri! Scrunched up paper towel in amongst all the lovely craft supplies - now I'm looking at everything in the front room and wondering what sort of stamping image or masking pattern it would make! The possibilities are endless 😆. More seriously though, the finished products are so good - clean, simple but so effective. Well done you.

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  2. Beautiful ! I love the darker one !

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    1. Thank you, Dianne - lovely to see you here xx

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  3. Periiii!!! You always blow me away with your clever ideas!! That party house!! The lights and the silhouette of people! SO AMAZEBALLS!!
    Thank you for submitting your wonderful work to the AECP assignment gallery.

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