I love the look of ink splatter. I really do. But, sometimes it's hard for me to create a good ink splatter background. It may turn out to be too much splatter or too little splatter. The color might be wrong or there might be a huge splat, right in the middle of my card panel, that I just took a half an hour to create! This might have happened to me a time or two. So, an easy way to get the ink splatter look without all the work is to use patterned paper.
Watercolor patterned paper and ink & paint splattered paper are my favorite to do this with, but any patterned paper would be interesting to see used this way. I chose Lawn Fawn's Speckled Patterned paper pack. I love the pastel colors of collection and the subtle nature of the splattered patterns. I chose the purple ink splatter on white background and cut it down to a card front size of 4 1/4 by 5 1/2.
Now, this patterned paper is just that, paper. It is very thin and you are going to be limited in the wet techniques that you could do on this paper. To beef mine up a little, I am going to cut a piece of Tonic Studios Grey Board. This is a thin chip board, and it's simply fabulous. It's thin enough to die cut but thick enough to give you added dimension and stiffness to you project. Today I am using it because I am going to emboss the edges of the finished panel. Adhering the grey board behind the paper front panel will make it strong enough to withstand what all I'm going to do to it.
Before I attached the patterned paper to the grey board, I wanted to add some ink to the background and add some shimmer. I used Distress Oxide in Dusty Concord and Wilted Violet to add even more purple to the environment around my fairies. To me, this makes it look like a purple galaxy and the purple splatter is the space debris. So, this is how my brain works. I used the Nuvo Blender brushes to ink blend some of both colors, working my way from the outside of the image, towards the center, while leaving the bottom left corner stark white. I figured that would be a good place to put the Moon that I am going to turn into an Earth. I should probably call it a planet such as earth.
I stamped all of my images using my We R Memory Keepers Precision Press. I lined them up onto one of my precision plates and inked them up with Simon Says Stamp Intense Black Ink. I stamped them onto Neenah 110 lb cardstock.
Using my Copic markers and various other brands of alcohol markers, I colored my images. For the Moon-Earth celestial body thing, the Moon image is part of the To The Stars stamp set, but I added some sporadic linework to separate water and land and colored them accordingly. My husband is unimpressed with my geography skills. I then used the To The Stars coordinating dies to cut them out. I used a rainbow of colors because I felt like since we were already in a purple galaxy far away from a planet such as Earth while being bombarded with space debris; my color selection was bound only by the limits of my imagination...
Before adding my images to my background, I wanted to enhance the background just a little more. First, I wanted to add a sentiment. I used "friends are the family we choose for ourselves". I figured this would imply that my fairies are all friends. I imagine them to be like Charlie's Angels, but fairies...
I stamped the sentiment from the Neat & Tangled Typed Sentiments stamp set with Nuvo Clear Mark embossing ink. I heat embossed it with Ranger White embossing powder. I wanted to make sure that was dry before moving onto the next step, so while we had to wait anyway, I figured I would add some shimmer. I sprayed on both Imagine Frost and Sparkle Shimmer Spritz as well as Hero Arts White Iridescent Shimmer Spray to the background. I set this under a fan and gave this whole piece some significant time to dry.
Once the panel was dry, the shimmer spritz used to make the background shiny also activated the oxide inks and helped them blend together, giving them a flawless finish.
As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to give this panel some more stability, so I cut both this panel down and the Tonic Gray Board down to 4 3/4 by 3 1/2. This is the size card panel I like to use the most. I joined these two pieces together using Scrapbook.com double sided adhesive roll. This stuff is super sticky and will do its job for sure.
To add a little more interest to this card I wanted to emboss the edges of the background. I have already given the panel a ton of stability and dimension with the grey board, it will stand up to the abuse. So, I inked the edges of all four sides and heat embossed them with the same Ranger White embossing powder. I did this several times building up the embossed edge and not minding where the excess powder may go.
I decided last min to add Stampendous White Fun Flock to the Fairies wings to add more texture. I gave all of their wings a good coat of Nuvo Simply White Crystal Drops and dipped them into some fun flock. After shaking off the excess and letting it dry for a few minutes I was left with some very soft white fairy wings.
Once the background panel had dried (and cooled) completely I adhered my images using various adhesives. I popped up my images using Scotch 3M foam tape and I adhered some flat using Tombow Mono Liquid adhesive.
I also added even more sparkle using clear sequins. I used micro Glue Dots to make my sequins stick in place. The entire background is adhered to a Simon Says Stamp Fog card base. To finish off the card, I used more white crystal drops to add opaque white dots to the purple fairies dress.
That is it for my card project today. I hope you all are inspired to create something by it. Remember that you don't need to "splatter" to get a splattered look on your card. There are tons of unique patterned papers to use with your adorable Neat & Tangled stamped images. Thank you for reading.
Koren
So sweet and magical! I love the background with the splatter :)
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