Technique Tuesday #7 Distress Ink Blended Sunset

Hello! I hope you had a great start to your week.

I'm back today with another Technique Tuesday and this time I used some Distress Ink blending to create a sunset effect on 2 cards.

Isn't that effect awesome? Those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I love Kay Fatula's beautiful butterfly embellishments, I have lots in a box but I can't always manage to find the right space on my cards for them. Well I knew that would just be perfect for this, so I happily dug them out of storage to use here.

I used 3 colours of Distress Ink here and I'll admit that I got so excited at how well this turned out that I forget to note the colours. There was a yellow that may have been Fossilized Amber and an Orange that was Carved Pumpkin, but I can't remember exactly the pink colour, I'm actually thinking that it may have been Candied Apple, which is a red but if used lightly it is more of a reddish pink, pinkish orange tone, or it may have been worn lipstick, but really you just need a pink/red, a yellow and an orange colour that work together.

I built the colour up gradually with my ink blending tools, on some cold pressed watercolour paper. This will give you a textured effect so you may prefer to use smooth paper, I quite like the added texture and I personally find that you can use a much lighter touch when using the cold pressed watercolour paper as the ink transfers very easily and lightly without leaving harsh lines which makes it super easy to blend dry. I blended the pink into the orange into the yellow for a natural blend. I then flicked some drops of water over the page and let it sit for a few moments before blotting with a piece of kitchen roll. Then I lightly flicked some white acrylic paint over.

Once fully dry I then stamped the Flight of the Butterflies stamp with Vesrafine ink in Onyx Black. I masked some of the stamping and restamped to get a bigger flight of butterflies. I used my MISTI stamping tool to help me do this more easily. I stamped one of the single butterfly stamps from the set into one of the spaces.

Then I gave everything a liberal spritz of Glimmer Mist, I do this over a sink so I create minimal mess.

Once dry I cut the finished piece into 2 strips (2 cards for the price of one, who doesn't love a bargain?), and trimmed the top and bottom so they would fit on my card bases, and then mounted them on some thin black cardstock so that you see a narrow strip of black on either side, this really helps it stand out on my white card base and pulls in the black from the stamping, both on the blended strip and the white card base.

For this card I stamped the Life is like a Butterfly sentiment directly onto my card using my MISTI to get just the right position, then I adhered the strip to my card and glued on this gorgeous butterfly from Kay with some Multi Medium Matte from Ranger. Finally I used some orange enamel dots from the Whimsy Summer Breeze set and some black enamel dots I had in my stash for ages. I think it looks really striking.

For my second card I decided to use the panel on the other side of the card,  I stamped the Thinking of You sentiment from the set with Black Versafine ink and then adhered my panel. I used this beautiful 'glass' butterfly embellishment from Kay and then I cut a few tiny butterflies from a scrap of the blended cardstock and the thin back card using a die from Memory Box. For the inked butterflies I used a little Wink of Stella to give them some added sparkle but I left the black ones matte. I glued all the butterflies down with some Multi Medium Matte.

Items Used:

Mini Distress Ink Pads
Blending Tools
Plain White Cardstock
Plain Black Cardstock
Cold Pressed Watercolour Paper
White Acrylic Paint

Whimsy Stamps Flight of the Butterflies Clear Stamp Set
Versafine Ink Onyx Black
Whimsy Summer Breeze Enamel Dots

Memory Box Dancing Butterflies Die
Butterfly Embellishments

I hope you liked today's Technique Tuesday and that it gave you some inspiration. I really enjoyed creating these and am thrilled with how they turned out.

Thanks for visiting and I'll see you soon!