Happy Holidays 2 – Ink Blended Mixed Media Christmas Card

Hi there! Here I am with another class completed and one that I liked a lot.  This one was Easy Ink Blending Techniques and the instructor was Amy Lee. I really liked her style and way of teaching, and there were some fun projects in the lessons.  Links to all my class posts are at the bottom of the post.

Inspiration

This class was all about ink blending in different ways, so for my card I decided to do ink blending over heat embossed stamping and since I am in Christmas Making Mode, I decided to make it a Christmas Card!

Overview of my card process

I took some cold press watercolour paper and cut it down to 5 x 8 inches because this was going to be another big card and I wanted to leave a small border around the card base when I made it.  Then I used the star corner stamp from Starry Night to stamp in opposite corners with embossing ink and covered it with Wow Sparkling Snow embossing powder, which is white with sparkly glitter in it.

I chose Dew Drops, Aqualicious and Teal Cave Altenew inks for my ink blending starting with the lightest and working up to the darkest.  I wanted to keep the centre of the card light and have the edges darker, which is where the heat embossing was.  After I was finished ink blending I spritzed it with some water and dabbed off the excess to lighten some areas and create water drops on my background.  Once everything was dry, I mixed up some white gouache and added some paint splatters to my card, then I did the same with some gold acrylic paint and left everything to dry again.

Meanwhile I took the “happy” word from Altenew Script Words 2 die set and cut it out twice from white cardstock.  I covered one with embossing ink and then dusted with Wow’s Gold Rush embossing powder and heat set.  Then I took the second die cut and used the Aqualicious ink to colour it to match the background where I wanted to put the die cuts.  Then I glued the gold die cut to the inked die cut leaving a slight overlap to create a drop shadow, before gluing them to the centre of my background.  I then took the “holidays” word stamp from the Mega Greetings 2 stamp set and used it to stamp and then heat emboss with the same gold embossing powder as the die cut.

After that was done, I thought that the background needed something else so I used the largest star from the Starry Night stamp set and stamped it three times around the sentiment, and then heat embossed it with the same Sparkling Snow embossing powder.  The final step was to distress and ink the edges of the card panel with Ground Espresso ink and then adhere it to a white card base measuring 5.5 x 8.5 inches, and the card was complete.

Thoughts

I really got into the Christmas mood making this card and I really love the colours.  They are not very traditional but I love turquoise and teal colours and I thought it looked lovely with the white embossing and the gold sentiment.

PROJECT RECIPE:

Altenew – Script Words 2 Die set – happy, Starry Night stamp set, Mega Greetings 2 – holidays, Ink – Dew Drops, Aqualicious, Teal Cave
Neenah 110lb white cardstock
Cold press watercolour paper
Wow – embossing ink, gold rush embossing powder, sparkling snow embossing powder
Nuvo – Deluxe Adhesive
Winsor & Newton – White Gouache
Jane Davenport – Gold Lame acrylic paint
Tim Holtz – Distress Archival Ink – ground espresso
From stash/other:

FYI Here’s a list of the Classes for Level 1:

.All About Layering 1
.All About Layering 2
.Clean & Simple Boutique Cards
.Easy Ink Blending TechniquesYou are here
.For The Guys
.Let It Shine
.Celebration: Stencil Techniques
.Seasonal Scene Building
.Easy Die Cutting Techniques
.Irresistible Inking Techniques